ABSTRACT
That acting has, throughout its history, been regarded as a threat to civilized society, and the actor regarded, both in terms of function and lifestyle, as a social outsider, is well testified by historical account and anecdote. Plato regarded actors as hypocrites, parlayers of illusion and falsifiers of truth. He feared that the mask they wore would become their faces and be a threat to his Republic. In Rome, the Justinian code stated that anyone who appeared on stage was marked with infamy. Actors were deprived of the rights of citizenship and often flogged for the good of their souls. Elizabethan actors were either servants of the nobility or lumped together with vagabonds and sturdy beggars who could be whipped from the parish boundaries.
