[Retsof]

You likely all know what the fourth wall is, the barrier between a fictional univers and this one.  It is refered to as "breaking the fourth wall" when a fictional charicter knows they are in a work of fiction.  But something is bugging me,  I've never heard of a first, second, or third wall.  So do they exist?  And if not, why is the fourth wall called the fourth wall.

[General Battuta]

Well, I'm guessing you could think of it as a stage, which typically has three walls as part of the set. If a character turns to speak through the 'fourth wall', they're addressing the audience.

[Retsof]

Hmmm  That makes sense, thanks for clearing that up.

[Ghostavo]

Well, I'm guessing you could think of it as a stage, which typically has three walls as part of the set. If a character turns to speak through the 'fourth wall', they're addressing the audience.

It's exactly that. The expression comes from the theater as you might have guessed.

[Mobius]

It was very common at the time of the Romans. Actors used to talk with the public and ask for advice.

[BloodEagle]

How this thread appeared when TV-Tropes was just cited is beyond me. :/

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourthWall

[Androgeos Exeunt]

* Androgeos Exeunt says goodbye to a portion of the remnants of his life for checking BloodEagle's link.

[Scotty]

No!  Must...Resist...Link!

I can't do it.

[Sushi]

Actually, TVTropes annoys me.

I guess I just don't like the idea of arbitrarily crowdsourcing taxonomies for subjective ideas. IMO it leads to overfitting, confusion, and lame memes.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

It was very common at the time of the Romans. Actors used to talk with the public and ask for advice.

yes, though post-roman european (western) theatre didn't evolve out of classical theatre. There's no formal link between the two until the time that theatremakers start studying classical works.
Western theatre as it came to be is a wholly medieval product as it where.