Conclusion: No One Is There–Ubiquity and Invisibility

Being by the nature of the function shadowy figures, these ubiquitous informers rarely emerge to us as named individuals and the perception of this is also contemporary, as one writer laments in 1616: ‘No-body telleth strange newes, inuenteth lyes, disperceth libels, setteth friendes at varience, and abuseth many millions: for when a priuie search is made for the authors, no-body is found to auoch the actions.’ This figure is both interestingly authorial, and ambiguous to the point of forming a hauntingly absent presence around the texts of the period. The conclusion considers the self-perpetuating nature of this phenomenon, its contemporary effects, and its modern legacy.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the Menace of the Audience

In The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Francis Beaumont offers a satire of his dramatic working conditions and the precarious nature of his own authority in relation to that of a potentially informing audience. KBP uses its onstage audience to stage malconnections between representation and authority, and the success of its metadrama rests upon its reference to a sense of the twisted interaction between the producers and the receivers of dramatic representation. The chapter considers the ways in which these citizen auditors ‘inform’ the fictional Rafe who represents their interests. The casual inclusion of the threat of the informer in even these light entertainments forms a sinister element in these problematic connections as KBP’s metadramatic interlopers signify the intention of an all-encompassing surveillance, and operate not merely as an audience but also as proxy overseers. The result is a dramatic form which reproduces its own the material critical context, commenting not only on the interchange of dramatic levels, but also including the ubiquitous hazard of humiliating and potentially debilitating prosecution. This metadrama registers the solid contemporary fear that mistaking the author’s intention may lead not only to unkind reports but also, ultimately, to the horrors of the early modern gaol.

Introduction: Errant Intelligence –The Devil’s Own

The introduction firstly identifies the defining characteristics, important contexts, and devices of early modern metadrama; it then elaborates on popular conceptions of the informer-figure, and explores connections between them. Using significant examples, including from such coney-catching literature as Dekker’s Lantern and Candlelight, as well as Shakespeare and Jonson, it outlines how metadrama contains discourses of production and reception which mirror authors’ perceptions of their own authorship, their audiences, and ultimately the nature of early-modern society. In describing how the proliferation of metadramatic structures in the early modern theatre coincides with an increasing sense of the ubiquity of the informer, it develops the idea that this hauntingly present figure reflects a perception of the potential venality of the audience. Further it demonstrates how the figure of the informer can also become a shady representation of an emerging authorial voice.

The Burning Issue: Metadrama and Contested Authority in Chettle’s Hoffman

In Chettle’s The Tragedy of Hoffman, authority is in flux again and here metadrama bites both ways as its usurping and informing metadramatic actors are punished by hidden audiences. Although the play’s metadramatic structure initially facilitates the active power of the vengeful protagonist and draws the offstage audience into his confidence, it is also used by the play’s antagonists as onstage audiences, in this case to redress an ill rather than to provoke one, providing the downfall of the plotters. The avenger’s deceptive usurping of authority and privilege is punished by the burning crown that boils the brains of the subject, perhaps a fitting punishment for the thought-crime of assuming or impersonating authority, either as pirate, impostor, or authorial plotter. However, the burning crown also bespeaks an authority troubled by its own mechanisms of control and punishment.

Metadrama and the Murderous Nature of Authority

Since early modern debate about the legitimacy of theatre concerns the question of the author’s authority in relation to that of the licensing authorities, and their informers, the fear of misinterpretation generates a self-conscious metadrama which expresses the ambiguity of authority in dramatic structures that aim to manipulate audiences’ responses. But, moreover, this metadrama often also acknowledges theatre’s own potential for complicity in social control, and is often concerned with the interchangeability of authority figures, informers and author-actors. In Philip Massinger’s The Roman Actor, these tensions and interconnections are embodied in the metadramatic representations of the dramatic productions in the tyrannous court of Domitian Caesar which conflate the act of acting with the murderous nature of authority and finally reflect on the nascent and often theatrical court of Charles I itself.

The Parasites of Machiavel

In Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy, Vindice, having been drawn into the role of informing and plotting parasite, wholeheartedly embraces his social function and his downfall exemplifies its critique. Like Webster’s Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi, he is an indispensable outsider operating inside the political establishment and he takes the heat for a society which is dysfunctional in its own imperatives and mechanisms of control. The Malcontent’s parasitic Malevole, Marston’s creation, is also both a metadramatic actor and as a displaced Duke is a satiric exemplar of the decadence and corruption of his society, thought by some contemporaries to offer a critique of the court of James I. Each resounds with the popular image of the Machiavel and functions within recognisably metadramatic modes, the natural province of the informer, here facilitating a critique of the structures of authority which license it.

The Reluctant Informer: Humanising the Beast

Even more so than Iago, or Middleton’s Vindice, Webster’s Bosola is the quintessential combination of informer and actor. His self-conscious Machiavellian role in the Duchess’s tragedy includes much metadramatic structure and some self-reflection on the typical actor who is cursed, or occasionally prosecuted, for playing the part of the villain. As this complex character’s conscience gets the better of him, his resistance to the role allotted him feeds into contemporary discourses on the nature of the informer, as much as it does into theatrical controversies and apologetics. The fact that his resistance comes too late for the Duchess, and ultimately for himself, works as an effective social commentary and satirical invective on these discussions surrounding both acting and informing. His activities finally come to rest at the feet of the authorities which instigate and fund them.

‘Subtle sleights’: Amity and the Informer in Damon and Pithias

The informer-figure permeates the conditions of early modern dramatic production and haunts the vagaries of reception towards which such ventures must look. Richard Edwards’s Damon and Pythias registers this awareness in its own metadrama, along with a basic typology of the kinds of illegitimate oversight associated with informers. A central issue here is the contested status of authority as a whole in a system reliant upon the devices and untrustworthy interpretations that come to be located in a wholly reviled class. It may not be entirely coincidental that 1564 also saw the expansion of the Privy Council’s policy of arresting and imprisoning people for recusancy and was thus a significant year in terms of the work of informers. Edwards’s drama offers its own solution to this perceived abuse of authority and social trust in the form of the classical amity of its eponymous friends.