In all of the periods we have discussed so far, the gap between appearance and reality that acting creates (or highlights) was a source of anxiety for many people. Both Greek and Roman actors aroused fears of excessive social mobility, although those fears originated in different social structures. Actors also aroused fears of gender instability, fears of deception, and fears of corruption. Various theories of acting arose, implicit in anecdotes about “possessed” or typecast actors, for example, or in the careful distance that orators maintained from actors, or in the behavior of certain stock characters within drama. All of these theories worked as ways of managing the threat to identity that mimesis was felt to pose, whether by diminishing the prestige of acting, diminishing the desire aroused by it, or associating acting with effeminacy, corruption, poverty, and deception. The actor was seen as someone who was able to re-create himself, if left unchecked.

All this changed in the Empire: the anxiety that was aroused by the appearance-reality gap receded into the background. Dissembling became a survival strategy, and sincerity became dangerous. Instead, audiences became fascinated by the gap, and fascinated by the possibility of collapsing it. They flocked to spectacles that blurred, crossed, or even eliminated the line between mimesis and reality. And some audience members became fascinated by the possibility of becoming actors themselves.