In this invigorating analysis, Matthew H. Wikander weaves together themes of hypocrisy and sincerity in acting, plays, criticisms, and antitheatrical theories. At issue is how critiques of theatre, termed “antitheatricalism,” have used differing and even contradictory approaches to acting and performance. According to Wikander, there are fundamentally three kinds of antitheatrical critic. First are those who, following Plato, admonish theatre’ pretense and its association with play-acting, immorality, and deception. Next are those contemporary critics, particularly new historicists and feminists, who claim that all human action is merely a social performance, “with its attendant inability to distinguish hypocritical from sincere performance.” To such scholars, performing onstage is merely a facade, since acting is little more than an imitation of social constructs. Finally, there are the critics who, following Rousseau, “cherish sincerity and prize inner self” (xix). Such critics dismiss theatre and performance as shameful exhibitionism. From this perspective, those who believe in human volition and the presence of an essential, inner sincerity believe also that presenting the private self onstage is reprehensible. Wikander stakes out a “middle ground” between the theatrical and the antitheatrical, asking: “must we throw out the baby of sincerity with the bathwater of antitheatricalism?” (xix–xx). Wikander’s analysis traverses several selected moments of theatre history in consideration of the “problem of identifying acting as hypocrisy and stigmatizing actors as hypocrites,” as well as examining “the idea of slanders against actors, slanders that particularly privilege the value of sincerity and set it in opposition to performance of all kinds” (xxi).