Apparently, in ancient Rome, and according to Plato, the answer is “no”.
Here’s the quotation from Augustine’s City of God (II.14):
The laws of the Romans and the speculations of Plato have this resemblance, that the latter pronounces a wholesale condemnation of poetical fictions, while the former restrain the licence of satire, at least so far as men are the objects of it. Plato will not suffer poets even to dwell in his city: the laws of Rome prohibit actors from being enrolled as citizens; and if they had not feared to offend the gods who had asked the services of the players, they would in all likelihood have banished them altogether.
Interesting.
PrBW
