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From "Secreit" Script to Public Print: Punctuation, News Management, and the Condemnation of the Earl of Bothwell
- Huntington Library Quarterly
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 80, Number 2, Summer 2017
- pp. 223-238
- 10.1353/hlq.2017.0013
- Article
- Additional Information
abstract:
Documents associated with the fall of James Hepburn, Earl of Both-well, in 1567 offer a rare insight into how texts were adapted for different purposes and readerships. Initially recorded in the manuscript "Register of the Acts of the Privy Council of Scotland," these texts subsequently appeared as printed broadsheets for public display in prominent places. They are the first Scottish documents of their kind known to have undergone this process of transition. As the texts passed from one medium to another, their form and punctuation were changed, mirroring their altered function. In this essay, Jeremy J. Smith shows that their differences in such formal features align quite precisely with the changing uses of literacy in early modern Scotland.