ACTOR, in the drama, is a person who represents some part or character upon the theatre. The drama consisted originally of nothing more than a simple chorus, who sung hymns in honour of Bacchus; so that the primitive actors were only singers and musicians. Thespis was the first that, in order to ease this unformed chorus, introduced a declaimer, who repeated some heroic or comic adventure. Aeschylus, finding a single person tiresome, attempted to introduce a second, and changed the ancient recitals into dialogues. He also dressed his actors in a more majestic manner, and introduced the conthurnus or buskin *. Sophocles added a third, in order to represent the various incidents in a more natural manner: and here the Greeks stopped, at least we do not find in any of their tragedies above
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three
three persons in the same scene: perhaps they looked upon it as a rule of the dramatic poem never to admit more than three speakers at a time on the stage; a rule which Horace has expressed in the following verse:
Nec quarta loqui persona laboret.
This however did not prevent their increasing the number of actors in comedy. Before the opening of a play, they named their actors in full theatre, together with the parts they were to perform. The ancient actors were masked, and obliged to raise their voice extremely, in order to make themselves heard by the innumerable crowd of people who filled the amphitheatres: they were accompanied with a player on the flute, who played a prelude, gave them the tone, and played while they declaimed. Actors were highly honoured at Athens; and despised at Rome, where they were not only denied all rank among the citizens, but even when any citizen appeared upon the stage, he was expelled his tribe, and deprived of the right of suffrage by censors. Cicero, indeed, esteems the talents of Roscius; but he values his virtues still more: virtues which distinguished him so remarkably above all others of his profession, that they seemed to have excluded him from the theatre. The French have, in this respect, adopted the ideas of the Romans; and the English those of the Greeks.