Jonson's first work for theatre since his Workes of 1616, The Staple of News (1625) presents a dystopic fantasy of control over information- gathering in which the news produced, though authorised by the eponymous Staple's monopoly, is only as reliable as street gossip. With its concealed observers, its predatory imagery and the augmentative nature of its gathered information, this play describes the familiar conditions of both early modern informing practice and contemporary dramatic production. Throughout the play a strict contrast is also drawn between the absurdity of the agency's monopoly on information and the ‘legitimate’ authority of the poet, whose immanence the play's metadrama continually reinforces. And, as ever, the deficiency of an audience's interpretation is of prevailing concern. The Staple's sources are not ‘journalists’ in the modern sense; rather they are cast here as common informers, though entirely lacking the ambivalence of Shakespeare's magical agents, delivering information to privileged patrons. In this case, their information is publicly marketable, and thus, moving beyond its critique of nascent journalism and the universalisation of commercial informing, the play's metadrama explores how Jonsonian self-fashioning negotiates the price of information, and artistic legitimacy, and also, ultimately, authority itself. This is especially sensitive at this time, on the cusp of Charles I's accession to the throne.

The play's loose plot concerns the foolish heir Pennyboy Junior, who is determined to spend his inheritance on information while being hounded by observing tormentors who want it for themselves, one of whom turns out to be his supposedly-dead father. Meskill sees this obsession with oversight as representing a ‘narcissistic desire’ on Jonson's part ‘to overtake his own issue’ and surpass his previous work. His turn towards allegory in this play, along with tendencies towards citation and bricolage, allows him to transcend the rigours of comparison to his monumental Workes and also to develop a critique of what that project represents. In this way the later plays can be seen not so much as ‘dotages’ as Dryden would have it, or examples of Jonson's ‘declension into the didactic’ but rather as a time of renewed experimentation.