Intelligence and Metadrama in the Early Modern Theatre
Intelligence and Metadrama in the Early Modern Theatre offers insight into why the early modern stage abounds with informer and intelligencer figures. Analysing both the nature of intelligence at the time and the metadrama that such characters generate, Angus highlights the significance of intrigue and corruption to dramatic narrative and structure. His study of metadrama reveals some of the most fundamental questions being posed about the legitimacy of authority, authorship and audience interpretation in this seminal era of English drama.
Key Features- Offers insight into the internal workings and motivations of the drama of Shakespeare’s contemporaries
- Opens a new window on the ambitions, concerns, and fears of these important authors
- Enhances historical understanding of the place of the intelligencer in the society and the structures of authority within which the drama was produced
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Errant Intelligence: The Devil’s Own
1. ‘Subtle sleights’: Amity and the Informer in Damon and Pithias
2. The Parasites of Machiavel
3. The Knight of the Burning Pestle and the Menace of the Audience
4. The Reluctant Informer: Humanising the Beast
5. Metadrama and the Murderous Nature of Authority
6. The Burning Issue: Metadrama and Contested Authority in Chettle’s Hoffman
Conclusion: No-one Is There: Ubiquity and Invisibility
Angus offers a subtle and sophisticated exploration of how early modern plays’ staging of informers allows them to interrogate human and perhaps divine authority. This book is an important addition to our understanding of the cultural work performed by Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.
