Translating Commonplace Marks in Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta

This essay locates the moment at which commonplace marks were ‘translated’ from printed classical texts into English vernacular drama in a manuscript of Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh's Jocasta, dated 1568. Based on a survey of the use of printed commonplace marks in classical drama between 1500 and 1568, it demonstrates that this typographical symbol was strongly associated with Greek tragedy, particularly Sophocles and Euripides, and hardly at all with Seneca. In light of this, it argues that the commonplace marks in the Jocasta manuscript should be read as a deliberate visual gesture towards Euripides. In this period, commonplace marks evoked printed Greek rather than Latin tragedy, and early modern readers might bring such associations to the English dramatic texts in which these marks also appeared, including the First Quarto of Hamlet (1603).