Intelligence and Metadrama in the Early Modern Theatre

by Bill Angus

Overview

Explores intrinsic connections between early modern intelligencers and metadrama in the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries
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 contemporariesOpens a new window on the ambitions, concerns, and fears of these important authorsEnhances historical understanding of the place of the intelligencer in the society and the structures of authority within which the drama was produced

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474432917
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/01/2018
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bill Angus is a Senior Lecturer in English at Massey University, New Zealand. He has written extensively on early modern drama and material culture. His books with Edinburgh UniversityPress include Metadrama and the Informer in Shakespeare and Jonson (2016), Intelligence and Metadrama in the Early Modern Theatre (2018), Reading the Road, from Shakespeare’s Crossways to Bunyan’s Highways (2019), co-edited with Lisa Hopkins, and his last monograph, A History of Crossroads in Early Modern Culture (2022). His latest edited collection Poison on the Early Modern English Stage, co-edited with Kibrina Davey and Lisa Hopkins, was published in 2023.

Table of Contents

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

What People are Saying About This

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.

Sheffield Hallam University Lisa Hopkins

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Sheffield Hallam University Lisa Hopkins