We have dealt with what Barker calls the ‘objects’ to which masks attach. What, then, of what he calls ‘the attaching agency’, the state? Initially, Barker is happy to describe all the state as a stage, just as he is to describe all the persons within it as actors treading across its boards. The literal image of the stage, however, is rather too passive to convey that sense of agency on which Barker's idea of the state depends. So he extends his analogy to take in those agents – the dramatist and the producer – with whom responsibility for the staging of any drama rests, and he compares the tasks that are faced by these two with the tasks faced in the production of legal performances by the legislator and the judge respectively. In this sense, Barker attempts to identify the state not just with the site of the legal drama but with the business of staging it. There is, though, a further extension of this theatrical imagery for which Barker has to allow. Although he chooses not to dwell on this point, he notes that there are occasions on which the state has itself to appear in the guise of a legal person. This will happen whenever there is the need to hold the state responsible in law for the performance of particular actions, whether in the private sphere (say, the repayment of debts) or in the public (say, the punishment of criminals).