This chapter contends that Shakespeare and Jonson reacted to contemporary anxiety over interpretation in differing ways, reading Othello and Volpone to compare metadrama and informing alongside issues of authorship and authority. Jonson deals with this often in structurally metadramatic and directly didactic terms, asserting himself as author in the transactions of authority and the authentic, while Shakespeare most often addresses this at a distance from his authorial self, his metadrama most manifest in the interplay of his characters. Considering these approaches, the chapter maps the emergence of a dramatic figure who is melancholic, machiavellian, and malcontented. He is both parasitic plotter and maker of tragedy, simultaneously taking on features of author and informer, the epitome of metadramatic characterisation. The chapter explores how metadrama not only mirrors the structures of informing but also offers the audience the perspective of this seductive figure as a negative model for their own interpretative practice.