‘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)

Through comparative exploration of metadramatic elements, this article proposes a reading of Philip Massinger’s _The Roman Actor_ (pub. 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 but conspicuously lacking the supplement of Christian grace. The preeminence of grace in Rotrou reflects his hagiographic sources, including a treatise by Jean Baudoin which itself recalls _The Roman Actor_s evocation of the notion of _theatrum mundi_.