Introduction

The word “actor” as we understand it now emerged in Shakespeare’s time. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, as designating “[a] person who acts a part on stage”, it was used for the first time in this specific sense by William Painter in his Palace of Pleasure (1566): “To whom may be giuen a Theatre of the world, and stage of humaine miserie, more worthily, than to him that hath with comely gesture, wyse demeanor, and orderly behauiour, bene an actor in the same?” (OED 4). Right from ..