This study presents a conceptual history of body-language in four different areas of the human sciences: 1. the system of rhetoric, 2. the doctrines of practical philosophy and social behaviour, 3. theories explaining the interaction of soul and body (anthropology), and finally, pragmatic approaches to theatrical acting. The focus of this interdisciplinary study is the connection between the language of gesture and its psychological foundations in the nascent discipline of anthropology. This investigation aims at the foundation of a hermeneutics of body-language, which provides a new understanding of drama. From this perspective, plays of Gerstenberg, Iffland, Klinger, Kotzebue, Lessing and Schiller are interpreted not simply as texts, but in the context of theatrical representation and the 'second language' of man, that of mime and gesture.