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My paper will examine the “Player King” (MANN 9019), one of the excised fresco panels found leaning against a wall in the vicinity of the Palaestra at Herculaneum in 1761 (Borriello et al. 1989: 138-139, n. 103; Parslow 1995: 148-149; Jones 2019: 11-12). In particular, it will argue that this painting responds to and reworks traditional artistic modes of representing dramatic authors. Presumably in transit and awaiting remounting when Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, the “Player King” is a square composition that depicts three figures. The body language of all three subjects directs our eyes to an act of writing: squatting on the ground, a female figure inscribes something illegible below the image of a tragic mask. Behind this display stands a male figure, captured in the act of removing his garment. Just left of center, a seated male (the eponymous Player King), draped in a white chiton with a broad gold band and holding a sword and scepter, cranes his neck to gaze at the inscription. The Player King, like the central figures in other theatrically themed art works discovered on the Bay of Naples (e.g. the seated “actor” of MANN 9036, a wall painting fragment from the House of M. Lucretius Fronto), was first identified as a playwright. To Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the Player was a tragic poet (Winckelmann 2006: 254), while others saw him as Menander (Maiuri 1953: 93). Recent analyses, however, interpret such pictures as reflections of the lived experience of performance (Mattusch 2008: 222-223; Taylor 2008: 24), an element vividly signaled not only by the figure disrobing but also by the tousled hair of the Player King himself, which stands on end as if wet with perspiration after removal of a mask. Nevertheless, understanding these compositions in the context of their engagement with conventional images of playwrights (e.g. Istanbul Arkeoloji Muzesi 1242) allows for a more layered interpretation of the “Player King.” This image, no unvarnished reflection of backstage activity, pointedly contrasts the longevity of both written texts and painted images with the ephemerality of performance.