Punctuating Poetry
Modern editors of early modern writing frequently modernize their poems to make them easier to read; this modernization includes both updating spelling and updating punctuation. Such modernization, like any editorial choice, has benefits and payoffs. On the one hand, sometimes difficult or twisty syntax can be greatly clarified by modernization; on the other, adding punctuation can often make a significant difference to the meaning of a text, making interpretive decisions on a reader’s behalf. The question of whether or not to modernize has been hotly debated in editorial theory for decades; one justification used by those who prefer to modernize is that spelling was not yet regularized and so there is no meaning to particular spellings, and that punctuation worked to not mark grammatical but rhetorical segments and so can be more easily understood if it is brought up to current standards.
In this curation, I provide some examples that show early modern authors thinking about the difference punctuation makes, and about how it can alter the meaning of speech and writing. The first selection is from a modern article quoting early modern writing instructors on the importance of punctuation.
Teaching Punctuation in Early Modern England
Short justifications become longer explanations for the inclusion of such chapters in other treatises whose authors claim the great importance of a proper use of marks of punctuation. In this sense, for example, Hill says that:
(…) that which among the Learned is accounted the most necessary thing in writing, is the Art of True Pointing; and because many are ignorant therein, (by which means their Letter may bear false constructions, and so disappoint their Expectations) I shall give some brief Directions to that purpose.
Smith, on his part, goes a little bit further and advances some of the reasons why punctuation is considered so important by Renaissance schoolmasters:
Forasmuch as the Points or Notes used by the Learned in distinguishing writing (…) are not the least part of Orthography, or of the right manner of writing: the ignorance whereof is frequently not only an obstacle to the discerning of the elegancy in writing, but likewise to the perceiving of the writers scope, drift and sense: It will therefore no[t] be impertinent here to add a few lines in explanation; thereof.
In fact, a proper understanding of the writer’s intention is the main reason cited by most schoolmasters to support the teaching of punctuation. They argue that misunderstandings may arise if stops are not used or they are used wrongly:
And indeed, these Points (…) are so necessary, that many times for want of them the Sense may be mistaken, or the true meaning of it perverted, even to the prejudice of the Writer (…).
Furthermore, the lack of punctuation marks does not only affect the misinterpretation of a writer’s words; Hogarth warns against those cases that can affect a man’s reputation or even his inheritance (1689: 43), and surely readers became more attentive to these than to his examples quoted from classical literature (1689: 42). Similarly, Hodges observes that “Great care ought to be had in writing, for the due observing of points; for, the neglect thereof will pervert the sens” (1653: 42)[;] besides, he notices the wrong punctuation in the following sentence[:] “My son, if sinners intise thee, consent thou, not refraining thy foot from their way”[,] which should be punctuated like this: “My son, if sinners intise thee, co[n]sent thou not; refraining thy foot from their way” (1653: 42). More examples are provided by Lye, who also notes that “the neglect, or misplacing the Points is apt much to pervert the sense, and true meaning of a Sentence” (1671: 141); comments of the like can also be found in A Treatise of Stops (1680: 7) which even explains fully one of the examples provided by Lye.
In the early modern print shop, compositors who set the texts into print from manuscript frequently regularized texts in the process of setting type, a fact that many editors use to justify updating that (non-authorial) punctuation for modern readers. However, even while writers sent their texts to the press knowing that their punctuation was subject to change, many were still aware of the difference that punctuation could make. The following excerpt from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream shows an example of a comically punctuated speech by the “rude mechanical” or low-class performer Quince, who delivers a speech with pauses in the wrong places. The noble commentators on the prologue make several punctuation puns in their analysis on his “points” and “stops” (both synonyms for periods).
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- PHILOSTRATE
- So please your grace, the Prologue is address’d.
- THESEUS
- Let him approach.
Flourish of trumpets
Enter QUINCE for the Prologue
- Prologue
- If we offend, it is with our good will.
- That you should think, we come not to offend,
- But with good will. To show our simple skill,
- That is the true beginning of our end.
- Consider then we come but in despite.
- We do not come as minding to contest you,
- Our true intent is. All for your delight
- We are not here. That you should here repent you,
- The actors are at hand and by their show
- You shall know all that you are like to know.
- THESEUS
- This fellow doth not stand upon points.
- LYSANDER
- He hath rid his prologue like a rough colt; he knows
- not the stop. A good moral, my lord: it is not
- enough to speak, but to speak true.
- HIPPOLYTA
- Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child
- on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.
- THESEUS
- His speech, was like a tangled chain; nothing
- impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?
Though Shakespeare makes his characters mis-punctuate for comic effect, something more serious happens in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, in which a badly placed comma allows for an assassination with plausible deniability.†† My thanks to Rory McKeown for this reference.
Edward II
- Y. Mor. The king must die, or Mortimer goes down;
- The commons now begin to pity him.
- Yet he that is the cause of Edward’s death,
- Is sure to pay for it when his son’s of age;
- And therefore will I do it cunningly.
- This letter, written by a friend of ours,
- Contains his death, yet bids them save his life.
- [Reads.] “Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est
- Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die.”
- But read it thus, and that’s another sense:
- “Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est
- Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst.”
- Unpointed as it is, thus shall it go,
- That, being dead, if it chance to be found,
- Matrevis and the rest may bear the blame,
- And we be quit that caus’d it to be done.
- Within this room is lock’d the messenger
- That shall convey it, and perform the rest;
- And by a secret token that he bears,
- Shall he be murdered when the deed is done.