[1] Archer intended his study to discredit Denis Diderot’s 18th-century work Paradoxe sur le Comedién which had just been translated into English some five years before.
Archer collected, analyzed, and presented their answers in his work, along with a survey of testimony of famous actors in history, including Edward Alleyn, David Garrick, Thomas Betterton, and William Charles Macready.
Some of the conclusions of Archer's research included: Masks or Faces ultimately failed to put debate over Diderot completely to rest, but it did reinvigorate it.
It also served as a key step in his campaign to bring both psychological realism and the plays of Henrik Ibsen to the British theatre.
[2] One of Archer's few foreign respondents, Tommaso Salvini, also served as one inspiration for Constantin Stanislavski in the development of his System of acting.