ABSTRACT
A Game at Chesse is the only known play of early modern London's professional theatres for which we have more than one autograph copy. There are also four other extant manuscripts and three quarto editions. While most elements of the different Chesse editions have been analysed and dissected, one aspect that has received little attention is the punctuation, despite ongoing disagreements among theatre practitioners, editors, and scholars over the topic, and the fact that there are exemplars penned by both a major playwright and scribe available for study. In particular, analysis of the Chesse manuscripts by both Middleton and Crane, in comparison to each other and to the quartos, reveals the creativity involved in the pointing of a play, irrespective of the fact that both were transcribing essentially the same text for the same purpose. This glimpse into Middleton's and Crane's pointing provides an example of how a dramatist or scribe considered his marks based on rhetorical principles and demonstrates how the playwright himself may at any time make a decision to re-point a manuscript in such a manner that, while grammatically unsound, would apparently make good sense to an actor or reader of the time.
