Introduction
Acting and lying

There is a problem with vocabulary. We often say that people are 'putting on an act' when we mean that they are lying about themselves. Over the centuries the word 'acting' has been used as a synonym for 'lying'. Plato argued that there was no difference between acting and lying, and roundly condemned the theatre. Diderot's Paradox of the Actor asks how we can speak of truth in performance, which of its very nature is a lie.

But we never tell the truth. We cannot properly 'tell' the truth, because our words are crude tools to express something, 'the truth', which may well exist, but which we cannot define. Indeed, the more we feel, the more useless will be the words we find to express ourselves. If I ask for 'some coffee, black with no sugar', there is usually very little at stake, and the words give a reasonably accurate account of what I feel and want. But when Chimena says to the King in The Cid, 'My father is dead', these will be the best four words that she can find and they cannot express fully what she feels and needs. The three words 'How are you?' become increasingly banal the more the relationship matters; the question means one thing to the postman as he delivers a package, another to a friend with cancer.