It is a curious fact that the elaboration of metadramatic structures in early modern drama coincided with an increasing social awareness of the ubiquity of the informer in the pay of authorities. The extensive employment of informers at the time produced a hazardous environment by no means restricted to those at the centre of political life. There is a heightened consciousness at this time of the dangers of even casual conversation, and Lorna Hutson identifies its ‘liability to circulate maliciously, as malevolently construed evidence against the speaker’. Informers came from all social ranks, in search of the potentially substantial remuneration their activities might earn within networks of patronage which took for granted, and in a sense formalised, the collection of information. These widely reviled figures fed the royal administrations and other authorities with information on every aspect of contemporary life, from the content of dramatic performances to the correct pannage of pigs or the activities of smugglers and recusants. Far from being exclusive to the spymasters of the Crown, any person of power and influence might expect a flow of information from such individuals; the Earl of Essex, for instance, employed his own expensive and extensive informing network. In an era often of great need, it seems there were always those potentially at the ready with information for sale.

Thomas Overbury's Characters (1611) describes one who is ‘Informer-like-dangerous in taking aduantage of any thing done or sayde’; such a person ‘makes men as carefull of their speeches and actions as the sight of a known Cut-purse in a throng makes them watchfull ouer their purses and pockets’. Here Overbury indicates the currency of the informer as a pejorative concept, connected with the fear of significantly negative material consequences. Griffin Flood is one such who was prominent enough to merit a short biography, The life and death of Griffin Flood informer (1623), which speaks of his ‘bad condition, foule speaches, and ill demeanor’ and notes his many ‘cunning informations of falsehoods’.