The Cacographic Renaissance: Reading and Not Reading in Early Modern English Manuscript Culture

This article contributes to the material history of reading in early modern England by examining the phenomenon of cacography, or “bad handwriting.” What were the causes of cacography, and what were its cultural, social, and political meanings? What factors affected a reader’s ability or willingness to decipher a challenging manuscript? What did it mean for a document to be illegible, and how did readers experience moments of communication failure? Drawing on evidence from letters, plays, and prose, as well as the testimony and practices of printers and scribes, this article argues that attending to specific moments of not reading—of friction and impasse—illuminates a pervasive awareness about the materiality of written language that conditioned the experience of writing and reading in early modern manuscript culture.