The Roman Actor

The Roman Actor is a Caroline era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger. It was first performed in 1626, and first published in 1629. A number of critics have agreed with its author, and judged it one of Massinger's best plays.

The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 11 October 1626, and performed later that year by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. Joseph Taylor, then the company's leading man, played the role of Paris, the title character. There is no record of another production of the play till 1692, when Thomas Betterton played Paris in a production by the United Company. The play was performed again in 1722 at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After that date the complete play fell out of fashion, though many actors, starting with John Philip Kemble in 1781, performed Paris's defense of the acting profession in Act I, scene 3 "as a short dramatic show-piece". Kemble also cut Massinger's text down to a two-act play that concentrated on Domitia's love for Paris; he staged this in 1781–82 and 1796.

The play was first published in quarto in 1629 by the bookseller Robert Allot. Massinger dedicated the volume to three friends and supporters, Sir Philip Knyvett, "Knight and Baronet", Sir Thomas Jay and Thomas Bellingham "of Newtimber in Essex". The commendatory poems that prefaced the play were written by John Ford, Thomas Goffe, Thomas May and Joseph Taylor.

The 1629 quarto also provides a list of the principal cast of the 1626 production:

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