Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/457

 from Giraldi Cinthio's ‘Hecatommithi,’ and closely resembles the plot of Shakespeare's ‘Measure for Measure.’ Whetstone's unwieldy play was never acted. He dedicated it, when it was printed, to his ‘worshipful friend and kinsman William Fleetwood, Recorder of London.’ Whetstone there offered interesting comments on the contemporary drama of Europe, censuring the English dramatists for basing their plots on ‘impossibilities.’

But literature proved an uncertain support, and Whetstone again sought adventures abroad. He was, as the printer explains in a note to the reader, unable to see his play of ‘Promos’ through the press, owing to his resolve to accompany Sir Humphrey Gilbert on his voyage to Newfoundland. He left Dartmouth with Gilbert's expedition on 23 Sept. 1578, and he returned to Plymouth in May 1579. The expedition proved disastrous to all concerned. In 1580 Whetstone visited Italy with a gentleman of Picardy named Dobart and another Englishman, and at Turin he challenged a Spaniard who insulted his country, but the Spaniard disappeared without fighting (The Honourable Reputation of a Soldier, 1585, epistle dedicatory).

Settling once more in England, Whetstone published in 1582 a collection of prose romances, which he named after the well-known volume by the Queen of Navarre, ‘An Heptameron of Ciuill Discourses. Containing the Christmasse Exercise of Sundrie well Courted Gentlemen and Gentlewomen. In whose behauiours the better sort may see a represētation of their own virtues. And the Inferiour may learne such Rules of Ciuil Govermēt as will rase out the Blemish of their basenesse. Wherein is Renowned the Vertues of a most honourable and brave mynded gentleman’ (London, printed by Richard Jones, 3 Feb. 1582, 4to, b. l.; Brit. Mus. and Huth Libraries). It was dedicated to Sir Christopher Hatton. Whetstone writes: ‘Whatsoever is praiseworthy in this Booke belongeth to Segnior Phyloxenus and his Courtly favourers.’ By ‘Segnior Phyloxenus’ Whetstone apparently meant Giraldi Cinthio, from whose ‘Hecatommithi’ many of the stories in the volume seem derived. The book is divided, after the manner of Italian novelists, into seven ‘days’ and one ‘night.’ In the ‘Fourth Dayes Exercise’ is given (from Cinthio) ‘The rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra reported by Isabella.’ Cinthio's tale had already furnished Whetstone with the plot of his play of the same name. His prose as well as his dramatic rendering of the tale was doubtless familiar to Shakespeare, who based on it his play of ‘Measure for Measure.’ Whetstone's prose version is reprinted in Collier and Hazlitt's ‘Shakespeare's Library,’ iii. 153–66, and in Cassell's National Library (1889). Richard Jones, the publisher, reissued Whetstone's ‘Heptameron’ in 1593 as ‘Aurelia, the Paragon of Pleasure and Princely Delights, by G. W., gent.’

In 1584 Whetstone abandoned imaginative literature and produced an elaborate prose treatise reprobating the vices that prevailed among the young men of London. The title ran: ‘A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties. Representing the Ordinaunces, Policies, and Diligence of the Noble Emperour, Alexander (surnamed) Severus to suppresse and chastise the notorious Vices noorished in Rome by the superfluous nomber of Dicing-houses, Tavarns, and common Stewes: suffred and cheerished by his beastlye Predecessour, Helyogabalus’ (London, by R. Jones, 1584, 4to). A new title-page introduced ‘An addition or a Touchstone for the Time,’ which gave a very detailed account of the disreputable aspects of London life. The book was dedicated to Sir Edward Osborne, the lord mayor, and there was a subsidiary address to ‘Gentlemen of the Innes of Court.’ The book was reissued by the publisher Jones in 1586, under the new title, ‘The Enemie to Unthryftiness: publishing by Lawes, Documents, and Disciplines a Right Rule for Reformation of Pride, and other Prodigall and Riotous Disorders, in a Common wealth.’ Copies of both issues are in the British Museum. At the back of the title-page of the second issue the printer inserted a list of Whetstone's previously printed works—ten in all—together with the titles of three ‘bookes redy to be printed,’ viz. ‘A Panoplie of Devices,’ ‘The English Mirrour,’ and ‘The Image of Christian Justice.’ The first and the third of these are not otherwise known in connection with Whetstone.

In 1585 Whetstone temporarily resumed his military career, and accompanied the English forces to Holland. He was present at the battle of Zutphen, when Sir Philip Sidney received his fatal wound on 13 Sept. 1586, and his description of the disaster is in the ‘True Discourse’ of his friend Thomas Churchyard (1602). Military zeal was visible in his ‘The honorable Reputation of a Souldier. With a Morall Report, of the Vertues, Offices, and (by abuse) the Disgrace of his profession’ (London, by Richard Jones, 1585, 4to). The title-page has a fanciful woodcut of a soldier in armour. The book, which consists of anecdotes of military service drawn from classical writers, was dedicated to Sir