The actor, Charles Macklin, is reported to have responded to the question ‘what is character?’ with the answer: ‘the alphabet will tell you. It is that which is distinguished by its own marks from every other thing of its kind.’ Macklin alludes here to the primary meaning of the word: the external mark or sign by which something is recognised (and differentiated from other marks or signs). The Greek kharakter (Χαρακτηρ) refers to an instrument for creating or stamping a distinctive mark: the term swiftly moves from tool to the mark itself. Macklin refers to the marks constituting the characters of the alphabet that serve this purpose of distinguishing one element from another. Together alphabetical marks constitute a system, put together in different combinations and sequences they form different meanings. So too the characters of the repertory theatre have places in a system, an economy, of possible combinations according to genre and type.

Stage ‘character’ clearly worked this way in that the dramatis personae was made up of a familiar set of types – the blustering father, the witty daughter and the rakish suitor of comedy; or the tyrant, the virgin and the sexual predator of tragedy – put together to deliver a plot with some variation through combination and complexity. This was a requisite of a repertory theatre where actors had their own ‘lines of business’, kept even when the performers’ physical presence spoke violently against type: heavily pregnant women played virgins, elderly men played young rakes. When actors played against their ‘type’ they were criticised for ‘stepping out of line’. They could also step out of character when they ‘pointed’, directing a speech with gesture directly to the audience. Audiences did not come to the theatre to be surprised by what characters did, but to be impressed by the quality of the actors’ technique in delivering their business.