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The despatch and receipt of messengers, the crying of proclamations, the circulation of books, letters and other documents are crucial elements in many of the dramatic texts of the premodern period. Ranging from the Angel who visits the Virgin Mary in the York Annunciation pageant through Rumour in Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV to the envoys who populate the history plays and city comedies of the Stuart stage, messengers provide insights into the wider changes to the material and intellectual contexts of English drama in this period, changes which were themselves driven by developments in the organisation, technology and conceptualisation of communication. This article offers an analysis of the representation of communication in early English drama, examining the ways in which dramatists stage and interrogate the commissioning, delivering and interpreting of messages. Of central concern are late-medieval and Renaissance conceptions of language and communication. In Timber: or Discoveries; Made Upon Men and Matter, Ben Jonson calls language “the instrument of society”.1 It is a significant phrase, for not only does it emphasise the use of speech in social exchange, it also acknowledges language’s instrumental role in affecting personal and institutional relations. We aim to explore this conception of language by analysing the effects of communication on personal, social and political bonds in early English drama. The period from 1360 to 1630 was crucial in the development of modern understandings of communication. Dramatic depictions of messengers arise from a history of communication and transport, institutions and practices which were starting to undergo marked change. An increasingly centralised system of state government, coupled with the concomitant loosening of aristocratic land ownership, the increasing complexities of international trade and financial exchange, and the marked expansion in the institutions of the law and civil bureaucracy, were matched by an enormous increase in demand for transport and communication services. These developments were reflected in a drama which itself experienced profound material and conceptual changes and was increasingly commodified in the burgeoning institution of the professional theatre. Scenes from Elizabethan and Jacobean plays which stage the exchange of information and news FROM REVELATION TO COMMODITY: PERFORMING MESSENGERS, LANGUAGE AND NEWS FROM THE YORK CYCLE TO BEN JONSON*

From Revelation to Commodity: Performing Messengers, Language and News from the York Cycle to Ben Jonson