‘Enter [. . .] a Boy Dressed for a Lady’: (Meta)theatricality, Tyranny, and Theatrum Mundi in Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor (1629) and Jean de Rotrou’s Le Véritable Saint Genest (1644)

Abstract

Through comparative exploration of metadramatic elements, this article proposes a reading of Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor (published 1629) in the light of Le Véritable Saint Genest, by Jean de Rotrou (1644). Rotrou’s hagiographic drama intertextually exposes Massinger’s revenge tragedy as a parallel study of an actor’s martyrdom under imperial Roman tyranny in the conspicuous absence of Christian grace. The pre-eminence of grace in Rotrou reflects his hagiographic sources, including a treatise by Jean Baudoin which itself recalls The Roman Actor’s evocation of theatrum mundi.