Conclusion: No One Is There–Ubiquity and Invisibility

Abstract

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.