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I dunno if it's always wrong to maintain a different persona during a relationship but I do think it's rarely helpful. In general, good relationships, long or short are based on people wanting to be honest with one another.
That said, never say never. My main concern would be effective boundaries and definitions. Short-term relationships can turn into longer relationships quite easily if nothing prevents them. If you were, say, on vacation for a couple of weeks or even a month someplace, and you had a vacation fling that was entirely "in character," I think that could be both ethically acceptable and practically non-problematic. It could even be helpful-- taking a vacation even from "yourself" as it were. But I think such a thing works because it exists in a liminal space not your own, within a sharply defined time context. That automatically prevents things from getting too messy.
I have never dated someone "in character," but (being trained as an actor) I sometimes play acting games by travelling or going to events "in character," complete with accents, mannerisms, etc. I usually improv background details as they come up. It's fun! Although I did once accidentally get stuck as a nihilistic lapsed Catholic seminarian during a 5-hour mechanical difficulty at SFO, and ended up having to improv a lot of dialogue about Christian theology with a Catholic anthropologist I happened to meet....
I guess I'd say, better to hold out and be yourself in a relationship, but I guess if the right situation occurs, sure, why not?
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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