George Whetstone: Mid-Elizabethan Gentleman of Letters 9780231882989

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Cjeorge Whetstone >sA NUMBER COLUMBIA IN

158

OF

UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH

AND

THE STUDIES

COMPARATIVE

LITERATURE

Çeorge Whetstone MID-ELIZABETHAN GENTLEMAN OF LETTERS

T$y (Thomas

KJjw

Q

I^rd

York

COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y MCMXLII

PRESS

COPYRIGHT COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

1942 PRESS,

N E W

Y O R K

FOREIGN AGENTS: Oxford University Press, Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E. C. 4, England, and B. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India MANUFACTURED

IN

THE

UNITED

S T A T E S OF

AMERICA

To

OSCAR JAMES CAMPBELL

Preface George Whetstone: Mid-Elizabethan

Gentleman of Letters is a result

of many hours spent in the Columbia University Library—chiefly in a tiny room toward the attic in South Hall. Practically every member of the excellent staff of the Library has at one time or another supplied friendly and efficient assistance in searching out books here or in other libraries of the United States and England. In beginning his investigations, the author had the benefit of the kindly interest and encouragement of Professors Harry Morgan Ayres and Frederick S. Boas. In fact, from beginning to end Professor Ayres has retained a benevolent sort of sovereignty. Professor Oscar James Campbell has patiently read every page from the roughest first draft to the last copy and has been unfailingly kind and wise in offering advice. Others of the University's fine scholars who have generously examined the manuscript and offered suggestions are Professors Dino Bigongiari, Roger Sherman Loomis, Marjorie Nicolson, and William York Tindall and Dr. Henry Willis Wells. Miss Evelyn Boyce and Mr. Henry H . Wiggins of the Columbia University Press have supplied valuable editorial aid. Acknowledgment should also be made of the kindness of various publishers in granting permission to quote copyrighted material: the Cornell University Press for quotations from T . F . Crane's

Italian

Social Customs of the Sixteenth Century and Their Influence on the Literature

of Europe;

Magnus's Documents pedia

Britannica

E . P. Dutton & Co. for quotations from Laurie

Illustrating

Elizabethan

Poetry;

the

for quotations from the eleventh-edition

Encycloarticles

"George Whetstone" and " S i n " ; the President and Fellows of Harvard College for quotations from Donald A. Stauffer's English

before

IJOO

Biography

and from John C. Rolfe's translation of Aulus Gellius in

the Loeb Classical Library; the University of Illinois Press for a quotation from Harold Golder's "Bunyan's Giant Despair" in the

Journal

viii

Preface

of English and Germanic Philology; the Philological Quarterly for a quotation from Robert H. Wilson's "The Mariana Plot of Measure for Measure"; The Macmillan Company for a quotation from Walter Pater's Appreciations, with an Essay on Style; the Cambridge University Press and The Macmillan Company for a quotation from The Cambridge History of English Literature; George Allen & Unwin Ltd. for a passage from Odell Shepard's Lore of the Unicorn; the British Record Society for the inquisition post mortem of Robert Whetstone; the Clarendon Press for passages from Charles Singer's edition of The Cures of the Diseased in the Forraine Attempts of the English "Nation, from G. H. Mair's edition of Wilson's Arte of Rhetorique, and from Captain B. M. Ward's articles on Gascoigne in The Review of English Studies; the Harleian Society for the augmentation of Bernard Whetstone's coat of arms; the Corporation of London for the abstract of Robert Whetstone's will; Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints for a quotation from Don Cameron Allen's edition of Palladis Tamia; and the Yorkshire Archaeological Society for feet of fines concerning the Whetstone family. T . C. I. South Hall Columbia University August 26,1942

Contents The Hap and Hard Fortune of George Whetstone,

Gent.

i

The Rocke of Regard

35

Promos and Cassandra

52

An Heptameron

80

of Civill Discourses

A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties and A Touchstone for the Time

131

The Honorable

162

Reputation of a Souldier

The English Myrror

177

The Censure of a Loyall Subject

219

Six Elegies

117

Appendix

263

Bibliography of Whetstone's Index

Wor\s

279 289

The Hap and Hard Fortune of Cjeorge Whetstone, Qent. entrance requirement for the hypothetical reader of this book is that he recall George Whetstone—somewhat hazily is sufficient—as the writer of Promos and Cassandra. For this frail grasp on immortality our author is indebted to the compilers of Shakespeare handbooks, who inform us that Whetstone wrote an unwieldy ten-act play, published in 1578 but never acted, from which Shakespeare quarried much of the stuff for Measure for Measure. This information, fortunately, seems to be perfectly true. HE ONLY

Critics and historians of Elizabethan literature, however, often find it necessary to consider Whetstone in relation to matters un-Shakespearean. In The Cambridge History of English Literature, for example, he crops up some twenty-five or thirty times in connection with such diverse subjects as prose fiction, translations, "the New English poetry," the functions of comedy, dramatic criticism in the sixteenth century, miscellanies (The Paradyse of Dainty Deuises and Floweres of Epigrammes), early English tragedy, early English comedy, Scottish literary antiquaries, the trend toward realism, the Puritan attack upon the stage, and Italian influences. Whetstone has a way, too, of sidling in when other authors are being discussed—George Gascoigne, perhaps, or Stephen Gosson, or Richard Edwards, or Sir Philip Sidney—and attracting a modicum of attention to himself. But in general the information about Whetstone supplied by critics, historians, and bibliographers is likely to be sketchy and is often erroneous. Even the scholarly eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (vet to zym) is something less than infallible. Here are the closing sentences of its article on Whetstone, with remarks inserted in brackets to suggest its shortcomings: The Puritan spirit was now abroad in England, and Whetstone followed its dictates in his prose tract A Mirour for Magistrates (1584), which in a second

2

George Whetstone, Gent.

edition was called A Touchstone for the Time. [The Puritan spirit was abroad, but the central ideas in A Mirour for Magestrates (of Cytiesl) were lifted without significant alteration from The Image of Gouvernaunce by Sir Thomas Elyot, whose death in 1546 antedates Puritanism by some years, and Whetstone's book also includes conventional sermon material older than Chaucer. Furthermore, A Touchstone for the Time was no second edition; it appeared in the same volume and is paged continuously with A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties.] Whetstone did not abuse the stage as some Puritan writers did, but he objected to the performance of plays on Sundays. [The book is concerned with the evils of the taverns rather than with those of the stage; and it seems that plays were no longer presented on Sunday anyway at the time Whetstone was writing. The one brief aside in which the stage is mentioned, though it lacks complete clarity, might well be construed as a disparagement of the whole stage controversy.] In 1585 he returned to the army in Holland, and he was present at the battle of Zutphen. [Apparently the Whetstone who went to Holland in 1585 was George's brother Bernard; George began his service in Holland in August, 1587, almost a year after the battle of Zutphen.] His other works are a collection of military anecdotes entitled The Honourable Reputation of a Souldier (1585) [a conduct-book for soldiers would be a more accurate description; the anecdotes are few and are mere incidental illustrations]; a political tract, the English Myrror (1586), numerous elegies on distinguished persons, and The Censure of a hoyall Subject (1587). No information about Whetstone is available after the publication of this last book, and it is conjectured that he died shortly afterwards. [But Whetstone's last published book was a metrical life of Sir Philip Sidney, in which the printer stated that Whetstone had gone to the Low Countries and had died. Accounts of Whetstone's death have long been available in the widely known and well-indexed Calendar of State Papers.] T h e eleventh-edition article on Whetstone has been retained, with slight abridgment, down to and including the current fourteenth edition. The bracketed interpolations, needless to say, will be supported and documented in the appropriate chapters of this book. They serve here merely to demonstrate the unreliability of the information about Whetstone to be found in usually reliable reference works. But in the realm of free and easy conjecture about the life of Whetstone, the farthest point west seems to have been reached by Charles Singer in the introduction to a reprint of a book on tropical medicine. 1 1

The Cures of the Diseased in Forraine Attempts of the English Nation (London, 1598), reproduced in facsimile with introduction and notes by Charles Singer (Oxford, 1915).

George Whetstone, Gent.

3

The initials G . W. signed to the dedication of the book provided Mr. Singer with a point of departure. T o appreciate the ingenuity of his ensuing speculations the reader needs only to remember that George Whetstone died in the fall of 1587: Richard Hakluyt in the dedication to Sir Robert Cecil of The Third and Last Volume of the Voyages Navigations Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, published in the year 1600, wrote as follows: "I was once minded to have added to the end of these my labours a short treatise, which I have lying by me in writing, touching The Curing of hot diseases incident to traveilers in long and Southerne voyages, which treatise was written in English, no doubt of a very honest mind, by one M. George Wateson, and dedicated unto her sacred Maiestie." But Hakluyt had learned that Doctor Gilbert contemplated an even better book on the subject, to be written perhaps with the collaboration of "The whole Colledge of the Physicians." Mr. Singer continues: "But who was George Wateson or G . W., the author of our pamphlet? We may hazard the guess that he was none other than the poet and swashbuckler, George Whetstone, remembered as the author of the crude play Promos and Cassandra, the original of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Whetstone, like many other Elizabethan writers, was accustomed to sign his productions with his initials only." Mr. Singer then attempts to show that bits of verse in the book resemble verse known to be Whetstone's, and argues further: "The banality of putting the table of contents into verse is an offense of which Whetstone is quite capable. Typical of him is also the unctuous loyalty to the Queen exhibited by the verse on page 5, and by the dedication. The English Myrror of George Whetstone, published in 1586, bore a dedication to Queen Elizabeth very similar to that of our pamphlet. Lastly, we may add that nearly all of Whetstone's work appeared in pamphlet form of about the size and general get-up of the production before us." Then Mr. Singer shows that Whetstone spelled his own name sometimes as Whetston or Whetstones, adding: "Moreover, in one of his works, The censure of a loyall subiect, a character who is apparently his own mouthpiece is called Weston. . . . In Middle English the word

4

George Whetstone, Gent.

whetstone

appears as watstone and weston. Hakluyt's spelling, Wate-

son, is therefore as near as a stranger might be expected to reach in those times." T h e introduction ends with a brief life of Whetstone, for which the information was gleaned from the Dictionary

of National

Biography,

and concludes: In 1585 he again entered the army, and in 1587 was back in London, having written his Censure of a loyall subiect. In a note preceding that work a friend T . C. explains that he is seeing the book through the press, G. W. being away in the country. With this note George Whetstone apparently disappears from literature. Although he was not without literary friends, no notice has been found of his death, the date of which is therefore doubtful. If our pamphlet was really written by him, we may suppose that the intervening period of silence between his disappearance in 1587 and its publication in 1598 was occupied in part by travels in the West Indies and in part by the imprisonment in Spain to which he refers in the opening sentence of his dedication. He would thus have been about fifty-four years of age when the pamphlet was published, and was still living in 1600 when Hakluyt wrote his preface. T h e text of The

.res of the Diseased indicates that M r . Singer's

G . W . was a seafaring man, apparently a ship's officer. T h e following remark is one of several of a similar nature to appear in the book: " M y selfe hauing 80. men, 800 leagues forth of England, sicke of the Scurvey, I caused this meanes of scarifying to be used . . . which with comfort of some fresh meates (obtained) recouered them all, except one person, and they arriued in England

perfectly sound."

A "George Watson, maimed in the Queen's service," was granted a pension on June 1, 1598, 2 and "Capt. G . Watson" in a letter to "Sec. Cecil" on June 22, 1599, refers to experiences aboard the Lion's

Whelp?

It is therefore moved that this possible product of the enforced inactivity in 1598 of Captain Wat(e)son be, tentatively at least, allowed to him and that it no longer be catalogued as Whetstone's. Its style and content would have been exceeding strange to George Whetstone, even in 1598. N o w , Whetstone, it is of course conceded, is not a figure of first importance. Inaccuracies concerning him will doubtless not appreciably 2

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1598-1601, p. 59.

s

Ibid., p. 216.

George Whetstone, Gent.

5

hasten the collapse of Western civilization. But his name appears a thousand times or more in a fairly adequate research library and is mentioned other thousands of times annually in the classrooms of the English-speaking world for the reason that he was a person of some importance in the important but relatively neglected period which immediately preceded the emergence of Shakespeare. T h e attempt to comprehend his mind and his times, even to arrive at some of the facts about his life, might by one of reasonably generous nature be classified as harmless or even as virtuous employment. T h e sane way of proceeding with such an undertaking obviously is not to consult the biographers, bibliographers, and commentators but to examine Whetstone's own writings and the few available documents relating to him. T h e first of these documents is an abstract of an inquisition

post

mortem:

Inquisition taken at the Guildhall, 15 July, 5 and 6 Philip and Mary [ 1558], before Thomas Curteys, knight, Mayor and escheator, after the death of Robert Whetston, by the oath of Thomas Lytton, Robert Lee, Henry Roberts, William Smyth, Thomas Dewxell, Robert Davies, Thomas Warren, William Dent, Walter Mef^yns, George Pert, Thorn? Kendall, and Henry Calys, who say that ••••< " Robert Whetstone was seised of 1 tenement called the three gilded Ankers, situate in Westcheape in the parish of St. Vedast, London, in the tenure of John Ayleworthe, esq. and John Keykwiche, by virtue of a demise of the said tenement made by the said Robert Whetstone to the said John Ayleworthe and John Key\wiche, by indenture dated 27 July, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary [1557], for the term of 99 years, they paying yearly for the same ¿ 5 . The said Robert Whetstone was likewise seised of two other tenements in Westcheape in the said parish, in the tenures of Robert Wynche and John Willyams; and 5 messuages in Gutterlane alias Good Roone lane in the said parish, in the several tenues of Hugh Morgan, Thomas Flynt, Thomas Adams, Richard Droone, and John Keykwiche; which said tenement in the tenure of the said John Keyktviche, the said Robert Whetstone by indenture dated 24 April, 1 and 2 Philip and Mary [1555], demised to the said John Key\wiche and Elizabeth, his wife, for the term of 40 years, they paying yearly for the same 1 lb. of cherries (cerasurum). So seised, the said Robert Whetstone, by his will dated 9 August, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary [1557], bequeathed all the said premises to his son George Whetstone and his heirs; for default, to John Whetstone, his son and his heirs; for default, to Francis Whetstone, his son and his heirs; for default, to

6

George Whetstone,

Gent.

his child unborn, if a son, and to the heirs of the said child; for default, to his son Barnard and his heirs; and lasdy for default, to his right heirs for ever. All the said premises are held of the K i n g and Queen in free burgage, by fealty only and not in chief, and are worth per ann., clear ¿ 2 3 . Robert Whetston died 10 August, 4 and 5 Philip and Mary [1557]; Robert Whetson is his son and next heir, and is now aged 17 years and more. Inq. p.m., 5 and 6 Philip and Mary, p.2. No. 98.* F r o m this inquisition w e learn that G e o r g e Whetstone was the son of Robert W h e t s t o n e of W e s t c h e a p in the Parish of St. Vedast, that Robert W h e t s t o n e left a considerable a m o u n t of L o n d o n property to George, and that G e o r g e was one of five brothers: Robert, Bernard, George, John, and Francis. W e learn also that Robert

Whetstone,

Senior, died on A u g u s t 10, 1557, h a v i n g on the preceding day made a will, that his w i f e was pregnant at the date of his death, and that his son Robert was at the time of the inquisition aged seventeen years. Apparently it was chiefly on the basis of this inquisition that Sir Sidney Lee, f o l l o w i n g H u n t e r and others, estimated the date of G e o r g e W h e t stone's birth as 1544. T h e y seem to have calculated after this fashion: George w a s the third child; consecutive children were often born about t w o years apart. T h e r e f o r e , if Robert was seventeen, Bernard

was

fifteen, and G e o r g e w a s thirteen in 1557. G e o r g e then was born about 1544. (Robert was, however, said to be seventeen in 1558, rather than in 1557, and their answer should have been 1545.) But before accepting this calculation, as all the standard reference works have, let us examine an abstract of another document, the will of Robert W h e t s t o n e : A. D. 1560. Monday next after the Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist [18 Oct.], W H E T S T O N E (Robert), haberdasher.—To Robert his son and heir all his lands and tenements in co. York in tail; remainder to Barnarde, his eldest 4 This abstract is quoted from Abstracts of Inquisitiones post mortem Relating to the City of London, Returned into the Court of Chancery, Part I, 1 Henry VII to 3 Elizabeth, 1485— 1561, edited by George S. Fry (British Record Society, Index Library, London, 1896), p. 166. ( T h e editor promises to "print these records so fully that it will be unnecessary . . . to consult the originals, which are now deposited in the Public Record Office.") Other inquisitiones post mortem of Robert Whetstone, unavailable at the present time, would possibly yield further details of biography: Lists and Indexes No. XXIII, Inquisitiones Preserved in the Public Records Office, Vol. I, Henry VIII to Philip and Mary, "Somerset: Chancery Series II, Vol. 114, No. 40; Exchequer Series II, File 944, No. 19," and " Y o r k : Chancery Series II, Vol. 1 1 1 , N o . 34." Both are for "4 and 5 Philip and Mary."

George Whetstone, Gent.

7

son by Margaret his present wife, in tail; remainder to George, brother of said Barnarde. Also to the said Barnarde his manor of Woodford, co. Essex, 5 in tail; remainder to John and Francys his sons. Also to George his son his tenements in Cheapeside and Gutter Lane in tail; remainder to his other sons. To John his son his lands and tenements in Ratebye [Ratby] and Isylye Walton [Isley-Walton], co. Leicester, and other property in the county of Stafford. To his child en ventre sa mère he leaves divers estates in co. Kent, as well as at Bristowe, Taunton, and Frome, co. Somerset. Also to Frauncys his aforesaid son his lands and tenements in the parish of Stokegurssye [Stogursey], co. Somerset. To James his brother his lands and tenements in the parish of Hanneworth, co. Middlesex. Notwithstanding the above devises, his wife Margaret is to enjoy a life estate in those lands and tenements left to Barnard, George, John, Frauncys, and to his infant en ventre sa mère. Dated 9 August, A. D. 1557. Roll 250 (160). 8 T h e elder Whetstone, then, was a haberdasher who in addition to considerable London property owned numerous estates in various counties. A n d his "present w i f e " was named Margaret. But now wc have another basis for estimating the date of George Whetstone's birth, a basis scarcely more trustworthy than the conventional one but deserving equal consideration. Since Bernard was the eldest son by his "present wife," it seems that Robert Whetstone had been a widower for an indeterminate time between the births of his sons Robert and Bernard. Let us estimate, not from the seventeen-year-old Robert, son of the first wife, but from the unborn fifth child of his widow. Francis then becomes two, John four, and George six in 1557, if we use the estimated spacings formerly employed by the best authorities. In that case George 6 The following entry shows that at least a part of the property of Robert Whetstone had been acquired fairly recently: " 1 5 5 3 , Nov. 28. The like [license], for 1 0 L . 13s. 4d. in the hanaper, to Edward Fynes, lord Clynton and Say, and Elizabeth his wife, to grant the manor of Woodforth and Hilhowse, co. Essex, 40 messuages, 30 cottages, 40 tofts, 500 ac. land, 30 ac. meadow, 500 ac. pasture, 200 ac. wood, 30 ac. heath, 7 L of rent and the avowson of Woodforth church, all formerly belonging to the late monastery of Waltham:—to Robert Whetstons of the city of London, 'haberdassher,' his heirs and assigns" (Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Philip and Mary, Vol. I, 1 5 5 3 - 1 5 5 4 , p. 3 5 0 ) . The property just described appears to be that which was willed to his second son Bernard. 6 Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, A.D. 12¡8— A.D. J668. Preserved among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London, at the Guildhall, edited by Reginald R. Sharpc, Part II (London, 1890), pp. 6 7 4 - 7 5 .

8

George Whetstone, Gent.

was born in 1551 ( ? ) rather than in 1544 ( ? ) . Either method is of course uncertain; neither takes into account other possible children w h o may have died in infancy, in an age of high infant mortality. A birth date of 1551 is, however, no less consistent with the subsequent facts about George and his brothers than the one formerly employed. A young man of twenty-five could, for example, very well have written The Roc^e of Regard (1576), which was Whetstone's first published book. It is unfortunate for our purpose that, although a church seems to have been on the site since 1291, the registers of St. Vedast go back only to 1558. It is possible to supply from another source the name of Whetstone's mother. She was Margaret Bernard, daughter and coheir of Philip Bernard by his wife Alice, who was the daughter of Richard Bishop of Yarmouth. T h e choice of the name Bernard for her eldest son is thereby made understandable. T h e wealthy widow acquired as her second husband, after a decent period of mourning let us hope, one Robert Browne of Walcot in Northamptonshire. 7 T h e information that Whetstone's stepfather lived at Walcot clarifies a number of things, among them one of Bliss's additions to Anthony Wood's account of Gascoigne. Bliss says: "Mr. Gilchrist has favoured me with the following information: 'Geo. Whetstone had wealthy relations, possessors of the manor of Walcot (four miles distant from Stamford), which parishes to Bernack, where the family of Whetstones usually buried, and where a monument of the Elizabethan style of architecture still remains.'" 8

(A

Francis

Whetstones,

George's brother, was buried at Barnack on April 6, 1598.)

apparently 9

It seems

probable that George Whetstone spent much of his youth at Walcot and that he later divided his time chiefly between Walcot, his mother's home, and London, where he owned property. It is then not difficult to understand why he happened to be present when George Gascoigne died at Stamford in southern Lincolnshire, four miles from Walcot. 7 Visitations of Essex, Part II (Harleian Society Publications, L o n d o n , 1 8 7 9 ) , p. 520. C f . also p. 6 1 7 . 8 Anthony W o o d , Athenae Oxonienses, new edition, w i t h additions and a continuation by Philip Bliss ( L o n d o n , 1 8 1 3 ) , I, 437. 9 T h o m a s A l f r e d W a l k e r , Pcterhousc Biographical Register, Part II, 1574-1616 (Cambridge, 1930). P- 225.

George Whetstone, Gent.

9

This serves also to explain why Whetstone's printer in London apologizes more than once for the proofreading of books, explaining that the author is away in the country. Churchyard saw The Censure of a hoya.ll Subject through the press for the same reason, and the book has its setting in an unidentified provincial spot to which the narrator had just returned from London with news of the metropolis. Residence at Walcot also probably accounts for Whetstone's writing "An Epitaphe on the death of the right worshipful maister Robert Wingfield, of Upton in the countie of Northampton, Esquire," published in "The Ortchard of Repentance" section of The Roc/^e of Regard. " T h e Ortchard of Repentance" is dedicated to Sir Thomas Cecil, Burghley's son, with these opening words, "Righte worshipfull, waying howe deepely bothe my good mother, and all her children are bounde unto you for received friendships, among the rest (acknowledging your desire of my well doing) I have sought howe (for suche benefites) to avoyde the vile vice of ingratitude." The Burghleys are from the Stamford neighborhood, and Burghley Park is in Northamptonshire, quite near the home of Whetstone's mother. In "The Arbour of Vertue" section of The Rocke of Regard are verses "In praise of my L [ a d y ] Cecil of Burleigh," Burghley's second wife. It is also possible that the Mistress A . C. to whom verses are addressed in the same section of The Roc\e of Regard was Anne Cecil, Burghley's daughter, although she was at the time of publication married none too happily to Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford and the author of a handful of brief occasional poems of some merit. The Censure of a Loyall Subject (1587) was dedicated " T o the Right Honorable, Sir William Cicill, Knight, Baron of Burleigh." In this dedication occurs the phrase, "Desirous to honour (with all duetifull affection) your godly vertues, as the comforts of all good men; and also to acknowledge some especiall fauours shewen vnto my selfe, vnder your sound protection, I present . . ." And on August 16,1587, Thomas Digges, mustermaster, wrote to Burghley, "In accordance with your desire, I have received George Whetston as a commissary of musters under me (although all places were furnished) and I hope I have contented him for his entertainment." 1 0 Whetstone's expressions of affec10 Cal. S. P. For., Vol. XXI, Part III (April-December, 1587), p. 244.

io

George Whetstone, Gent.

tion for the Burghleys were probably bids for patronage, but they were more plausible, coming from a neighbor. Nor were Whetstone's associations with the vicinity of Stamford necessarily a result of his mother's marriage alone. It is impossible to say how long Robert Whetstone, pere, had been a London haberdasher. The name Whetstone is frequent in the records of Elizabethan times and earlier and is widely dispersed. The fact that the eldest son was left estates in Yorkshire may be significant. The family name occurs often in Wills in the Yorf( Registry, 1389-1514. A will listed for December 18, 1400, is that of Robert Whytstane, the spelling of whose name possibly justifies a digression. The early form of the name indicates that it meant white stone; Whetstone's printers and other contemporaries several times spell it Whitston. The most frequent Elizabethan spelling seems to be Whetstones). It therefore seems that the pronunciation Whets-ton would be better than that of Whet-stone more often heard in our times. Perhaps we should spell it Whetston, rather than Whetstone. Of young George Whetstone's education no record has been found. "Barnard Whitestones or Whetstones" was, however, matriculated fellow commoner, the first of the three ranks, from St. John's, Cambridge, at Easter, 1563. And a Francis Whetstone, presumably George's youngest brother, was matriculated pensioner, the second rank, from the same college at Easter, 1573. Probably this same Francis was admitted at Gray's Inn in 1578. 1 1 Education seems to have been customary in the family. Biographers of Whetstone usually state that as a young man he spent some time at court seeking preferment, but without success, and that he then joined the army in 1572 and served as an officer in the Low Countries. But the evidence advanced in support of these statements seems insufficient. They appear to be based ultimately on a supposedly autobiographical section 1 2 of The Rocke of Regard, which is probably in fact entirely fictional. Whetstone there has an elderly man, whom biographers have rashly identified as himself, tell that he served in the 11 Alumni Cantabrigienses, compiled by John Venn and J. A. Venn (Cambridge, 1927), IV, 392, 382. 12 Pages 1 8 6 - 2 1 4 in John Payne Collier's reprint.

George Whetstone, Gent.

u

army and was advanced in pay. Apparently the conclusion that he accompanied the expedition to the L o w Countries in 1572 is based merely on the fact that there was an expedition in that year and that it occurred before 1576, the date of The Rocfe of Regard. T h e only other source ever cited for this information is A True Discourse Historicall, translated and collected by Tfhomas] C[hurchyard] and Ric[hard] Rofbinson] (1602). Whetstone's name does appear three times in that book, 13 but each time only as an acknowledgment that he was the author of a metrical life of Sir Philip Sidney, from which the authors have drawn information about Sidney's heroism at Zutphen and his subsequent death. The statements about Whetstone's military record prior to 1585 should be abandoned in deference to his own repeated statements in The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier (1585) that he was totally without martial experience. "Inventions of P. Plasmos" in the fourth section of The Roc\e of Regard (1576) doubtless contains autobiography. While the autobiography quite possibly is liberally intermixed with fiction—the identities of all the characters are concealed by fictitious names—Whetstone assures us on the last page of A Touchstone for the Time (1584) that "Inventions of P. Plasmos" is autobiographical: No man was eucr assaulted with a more daungerous strategeme of cosonage than my self, with which my life & liuing was hardly beset. No man has more cause to thanke God for a free deliuery than my self, nor anie man euer sawe, more suddaine vengeance inflicted vpon his aduersaries, than I my selfe of mine: as liuely appeareth in the ende of my booke intituled The rocke of regarde, imprinted many yeares past. "Inventions of P. Plasmos" is a series of passages of verse, supposedly by P. Plasmos and others, interspersed with introductory prose comment by "The Reporter." It boils down to a brief narrative as follows. Paulus Plasmos, a callow youth, became enamored of a faithless beauty named Laymos and spent much money on her. "Being somewhat behind hand by reason of his former unthriftines, having notwithstanding very proper living, Plasmos unhappilie hit in acquaintance with certaine couseners, who seing his sufficiente abilitie, supplied his want 13

Pages 89, 90, 9 1 .

12

George Whetstone, Gent.

from time to time with monie, till they had wrapt him in very daungerous and cumbersome bonds." Plasmos wished to sell "some parcell of his land; but by reason that it was intayled, none would deale with him, until a recoverie were had thereof. Plasmos . . . reposing a great confidence in one Liros . . . committed the trust of his recovery unto him; who traiterously persuaded and instructed by Frenos his confederate, by chaunging and counterfeiting of deedes, had purchaste all Plasmos living for nothing, if he and his fellowes eagre desire of the possession, by Plasmos untimely destruction, had not decyphered their devilish deceites." Liros raised a quarrel between Plasmos and certain other youths, in the hope that Plasmos would be killed. In the ensuing fray Plasmos is "maymed on his right hande" (or, in other passages, sometimes his fist, sometimes his wrist). The cozeners charged that Plasmos was "an unthrift, a quareler, a proude, and prodigall person, &c. who, to maintaine his braverie, departed . . . such and such parcels of lande, the compleynants monie wasted by unthriftinesse," seeking thereby to force a quiet settlement. The ultimate settlement is not perfectly clear, but Plasmos still retains a competence and, made wiser by his experience, pens a "Farewell to Wanton Pleasures." God's justice is visited on his enemies (Liros, Frenos, Caphos, and Pimos), all of whom shortly die horrible deaths. The maimed hand of Plasmos, mentioned half a dozen or more times, suggests the conclusion of Whetstone's verses on "the discommodities of quarrelling": But (ah!) good couse, at this my verse the reader smyle I see, Who sayes, behold how far from words his deeds doe disagree: If halfe this reason rulde his rage, his rashnesse had not caught A maimed hand (which true I graunt), nor tryall had me taught The goodnesse halfe of such a lym, which by the losse I finde. But sith mishap would have it so, this shewes an honest mynde, To wame his friends the vice to shun, whose proofe bewrayes the woe: If late repentance wrought him helpe, he would no more do so.14 "Inventions of P. Plasmos" is the last piece in The Rocfc of Regard. Whetstone makes it perfectly clear that what he tells "in the ende" of The Roc\e of Regard is autobiography. It is also plausible that a young 14

Page 222.

George

Whetstone, Gent.

13

man in long-ago Elizabethan times should have an affair with a light woman, should involve himself financially, and should be wounded in a tavern brawl. But several other often-alleged biographical facts—his experiences at court, his two military campaigns leading to a captaincy in the army, his failure at farming, and his resulting beggary—come not from "Inventions of P. Plasmos" but from a poem which occurs much earlier in the book. 15 The title of the earlier poem is "The Honest Minded Mans Adventures, His Largesse, and His Farewell to the World; a Worke Discovering the Subtilties of All Sortes of Men." The narrator of that poem is an elderly beggar who is dying—obviously not our hero. That poem is not necessarily autobiographical; Whetstone never said that it was. There is evidence, however, to support a conjecture that he was in 1576 a student at one of the Inns of Court. His Roc\e of Regard, signed "from my lodgings in Holborn, October 15, 1576," contains poems addressed to other young men who were matriculated at the neighboring Inns of Court; among these poems is one addressed to "my friends and companions at Furnival's Inn." Complete registers of Furnival's Inn for the period in question are not available. At any rate his residence in the neighborhood of the Inns of Court doubtless served to intensify any impulse to write which he may previously have entertained. The neighborhood had long been a center of literary activity. In 1560 when the spirit of Seneca appeared to Jasper Heywood in a dream at Oxford and urged him to translate the tragedies, Heywood seemed to suspect that the ancient sprite had come to the wrong address: But yf thy will be rather bent, a yong mans witt to proue, And thinkst that elder lerned men perhaps it shall behoue, Jn woorks of waight to spende theyr tyme, goe where Mineruaes men, And finest witts doe swarme: whome she hath taught to passe with pen. 15

Pages 186 ff.

George Whetstone, Gent. Jn Lyncolncs Jnnc and Temples Twayne, Grayes Jnnc and other mo, Thou shalt them fynde whose paynfull pen thy verse shall florishe so, That melpomen thou wouldst well weene had taught them for to wright, And all their woorks with stately style, and goodly grace t'endight. There shalt thou se the selfe same Northe, whose woorke his witte displayes, And Dyall dothe of Princes paynte, and preache abroade his prayse. There Sackuyldes Sonetts sweetely sauste and feady fyned bee, There Nortons ditties do delight, there Yeluertons doo flee Well pewrde with pen: suche yong men three, as weene thou mightst agayne, T o be begotte as Pallas was, of myghtie Joue his brayne. There heare thou shalt a great reporte, of Baldwyns worthie name, Whose Myrrour dothe of Magistrates, proclayme eternall fame. And there the gentle Blunduille is by name and eke by kynde, Of whome we learne by Plutarches lore, what frute by Foes to fynde. There Bauande bydes, that turnde his toyle a Common welthe to frame, And greater grace in Englyshe geues, to woorthy authors name. There Googe a gratefull gaynes hath gotte, reporte that runneth ryfe, W h o crooked Compasse doth describe, and Zodiake of lyfe. And yet great nombre more, whose names yf J shoulde now resight, A ten tymes greater woorke than thine, J should be forste to wright, A pryncely place in Parnasse hill, for these there is preparde,

George Whetstone, Gent.

15

Where crowne of glittryng gloric hangs, for them a ryght rewarde. Wheras the lappes of Ladies nyne, shall dewly them defende, That haue preparde the Lawrell leafe, about theyr hedds to bende. And where theyr Penns shall hang full hie, and fame that erst was hyd Abrode in Brutus realme shall flie, as late theyr volumes dyd. The generation of worthy authors whom Heywood enumerates had doubtless departed by the time of Whetstone's residence, but our author inherited from them an atmosphere and a tradition. The Holborn of those days was a sparsely settled district consisting of two thin rows of houses extending across open fields and pastures through the district occupied by the Inns o£ Court. Gray's Inn was on one side of the road; Lincoln's Inn, on the other. Everybody must have known nearly everybody else. Whetstone seems to have made a number of friends and to have become a member of a kind of unofficial society of literary aspirants, most of whom are now naturally lost to fame. Nicholas Bowyer, Rfobert] C[udden], Humphrey Turner, Abraham Fleming, and John Wytton contributed commendatory verse for his first book. One of the poems in the text is "written to his especiall friend, maister R. C.," and another was "written at the request of his especiall friend and kinseman, Maister Robert Cudden of Grayes In." " A n Epitaphe upon the Death of Henry Cantrell, of Lincolnes Inne, G e n t . ; 1 8 by His Friend R. C." was also included, as well as " A Caveat to G. W. at His Going into Fraunce: Written by His Friend R. C . " 1 7 Whetstone's verses contributed to the 1578 edition of Edwards's Paralyse of Dainty Deuises, too, were written, so their title states, at the request of Robert Cudden. Then there is a reply by Hfenry] C[antrell] to some verses by G. W . and an epitaph by Whetstone "on the death of his verie friend, John Note, of Grayes Inne, Gent." Other friends of 16 "Henry Cantrell of Norfolk, late of the barr. of Furnivalls Inn" entered Lincoln's Inn on March 5, 1574/5 {The Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln's Inn . . . Admissions from A.D. 1420, Lincoln's Inn, 1896, Vol. I, p. 82). 17 Of the trip to France alluded to by R. C. no record has been found. But Whetstone, as we shall discover later in examining his sources, read French easily.

i6

George Whetstone, Gent.

this period were George Gascoigne, to whose Posies (1575) was prefixed a commendation by Whetstone, and Timothy Kendall, whose Flotveres of Epigrammes (1577) was similarly commended. Geoffrey Fenton was also living not far away. The preface of his Golden Epistles is signed "At my chamber in the Blacke Friers in London the fourth of Februarie, 1575." Whetstone almost certainly knew also at this time Gascoigne's stepson, Nicholas Breton, whose Floorish upon Fancie is signed "From his chamber in Holbourne, this X X . of February, 1577." The Floorish upon Fancie—with its arbors, flowers, complaints, farewells, alliterative titles, dreams, epistles, dialogues, proverbs, dolorous discourses, and imprecations against dice—has more in common with Whetstone's Roc{e of Regard than proximity of date. The two books show the same solicitude for young gentlemen, the same preoccupation with amorous devices, and the same "melancholicke humours" over the wickedness of the world. Both writers were to turn to grave matters as the years passed—Nicholas to religion, George to patriotism and religion. On October 7, 1577, Whetstone witnessed the death at Stamford of his friend George Gascoigne and shortly afterward wrote his oftenreprinted metrical life of Gascoigne. Whetstone's third book to be published, the play Promos and Cassandra (1578), is preceded by a dedicatory letter addressed "To his worshipfull friende, and Kinseman, William Fleetewoode Esquier, Recorder of London." From this letter we learn that Whetstone was "resolved to accompanye the adventurous Captaine, Syr Humfrey Gylbert, in his honorable voiadge." With this resolve the Inns-of-Court period apparently ends on July 29, 1578, when the dedication of Promos and Cassandra was signed. In "The Printer to the Reader" Richard Jones explains that Master Whetstone's "leisure was so lyttle (being then readie to depart his country) that he had no time to worke it anew, nor to geve apt instructions, to prynte so difficulté a worke." As Mark Ecdes has it, Whetstone "in place of a last will and testament hastened to leave the world his Promos and Cassandra." 18 This 1578 expedition of Sir Humphrey's was more pretentious than 18

Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 1931, p. 564.

George Whetstone, Gent.

17

the better known one of 1583 in which he lost his life. Ten or eleven ships were assembled, all heavily armed; and "very many gentlemen of good estimation drew unto him, to associate him in so commendable an enterprise, so that the preparation was expected to grow into a puissant fleet, able to encounter a kings power by sea." 1 9 The largest ship was the Anne Ager (or Auchier), "admirall of the flete," a vessel of 250 tons burden, armed with "caste peces 24. fowlers 4. one Brasse pece." Whetstone was assigned to the vice admiral, the Hope, commanded by Sir Humphrey's half-brother, Carew Raleigh. The Hope is listed as "of Greenway," the home of the Gilberts and Raleighs near Dartmouth. The third ship, the Falcon, listed as the Queen's ship, had for its captain a younger brother of the captain of the Hope, Walter Raleigh. Having left London, Sir Humphrey arrived at Dartmouth on August 25; Captain Henry Knowles from London sailed for Plymouth on September 22. The main body of the fleet, setting out four days later, was dispersed by contrary winds, some to the Isle of Wight, some "other ways." By October 15 they were together again at Plymouth, whence they put to sea on October 29, only to be driven back by a tempest.20 Elizabethan gentlemen adventurers, as the records of more than one expedition testify, were a bold, insolent, truculent lot. Sir Humphrey's band proved to be no exception. Sir Humphrey was doubtless correct in thinking that the dissension sprang chiefly from early delays and disasters. The bickering and wrangling centered about Henry Knowles, Esquire, captain of the Elephant, who during Sir Humphrey's absence threatened to hang Miles Morgan, captain of the Red Lion and staunch adherent of Sir Humphrey. 21 Knowles drew to him "as many as either the longe tyme of staie by contrarie wyndes have tyred or his affection allured." Through the mediation of Sir John Gilbert, Sir Humphrey's 19 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, VIII (Glasgow, 1904), 39-40. 20 "List of Ships Officers, Ordinance, etc., of Gylberte's Expedition of 1 5 7 8 , " Cal. S. P. Dom. Eliz., Vol. C X X V I , No. 49; Carlos Slafter, Sir Humphrey Gylberte and His Enterprise oj Colonization in America (Publications of the Prince Society, Boston, 1903), pp. 253-58. 21 Letter of Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Walsingham, November 12, 1578, Cal. S. P. Dom. Eliz., Vol. CXXVI, No. 84. Reprinted also in Slafter, op. cit., p. 246.

18

George Whetstone, Gent.

elder brother, mayor of Plymouth at the time, they were reconciled, but not for long. According to Sir Humphrey, Knowles continued to make trouble: Without any occasion ministered he often and openly persuaded my company and gentlemen to my disgrace howe much he embased and subjected himself to serve under me Consideringe his estimation and creditt, accomptinge him self as he often and openlie saied equall in degree to the best knightes and better than the most in Englande. Farther he in my owne heringe not onely used me so disdaynfullie both in spech and countenaunce as my rashe and folish Condicion hath seldome bynne sene accustomed to endure, but also taken partes and boldened such of my companye . . . as I have admonished or found fault withal.-2 When Sir Humphrey invited Knowles to his table, Knowles replied in the presence of a number of gentlemen that he had money to pay for his dinner and that he would leave Sir Humphrey's trencher for those beggars who were unable to pay for their meals. When Sir Humphrey reprimanded his own "cousin Deny"—Edward Denye, captain of the bark Denye—for striking with his sword a sailor who had not drawn, Denye deserted to Knowles. When the Earl of Bedford commanded John Heile, a justice of the peace, to require Knowles to deliver two of his company accused of the murder of one John Leonard in Plymouth, Knowles refused. He again refused when required by Sir John Gilbert and Sir Humphrey. Likewise when his men had "almost killed" a constable, he refused to allow their arrest. Sir Humphrey further alleges that Knowles, having captured Holbeame, a notorious pirate, released him, bringing suspicion on their whole enterprise. Sir Humphrey also objected to the personnel of Knowles's crew: "He hath store of notorious evill men about hym as Loveles and Callice with others." By November 5 Knowles had again deserted the undertaking and an attempt at another reconciliation failed, Knowles contending that Sir Humphrey had called him factious, seditious, and proud.23 The amiable Knowles finally sailed away on November 18, taking with him not only the Elephant, but also the Denye, the Francis, possibly a fourth ship, and 160 gentlemen, soldiers, and mariners. Sir Humphrey 22

Ibid.

23

Cal. S. P. Dom. Eliz., Vol. CXXVI, No. 46; Slafter, op. cit., pp. 250 ff.

George Whetstone, Gent.

19

with the remaining seven ships and 365 men set sail on the next day. Whetstone appears to have taken no prominent part in the controversy, but he evidently remained loyal. His name appears in the list of those who sailed with Sir Humphrey on November 19. The destination and purpose of the expedition are not now clear and probably were not clear at the time the expedition was organized. Sir Humphrey seems at first to have been interested in seeking a northwest passage to China. 24 By 1578 Frobisher had taken over this project. In 1574 Sir Humphrey had requested authority to explore and trade in southern lands. But a paper dated November 6, 1577, A Discourse How Hir Majestic May Annoy the King of Spayne,25 thought to be Sir Humphrey's, may have been the chief cause of confusion in the minds of the "noble pilgrims." It proposed the surreptitious destruction of Spanish shipping by English expeditions officially licensed "to discover and inhabyte some straunge place." 2 6 By continued use of this method the Spanish navy could, the Discourse states, be so impoverished that it would never recover. The writer seems to have understood his thrifty, hesitant Queen. Having pointed out that the enterprise was to cost her nothing, he attempted in closing to overcome her characteristic inertia: "But if yor Majestie like to do it at all, then would I wish yor highnes to consider that delay doth often tymes prevent the perfourmaunce of good 24 He had petitioned the Queen for permission in 1566 and again in 1567 (Slafter, op. cit., pp. 185-86). George Gascoigne printed in 1576, with a prefatory epistle and a commendatory sonnet of his own, Sir Humphrey's Discourse to Prove a Passage by the Northwest to Cataia and East India. 25 Slafter, op. cit., pp. 237-44. 26 "Your Majestie is to thinck that it is more then tyme to pare theire nayles by the stumpes, that are most readie prest to pluck the crowne from yor highnes head, not only by foraine force: but also by stirring up of home factions. . . . And the deminishing of theire forces by sea is to be done eyther by open hostilytie, or by some colorable meanes; as by geving of lycence under Ires, [letters] patentes to discover and inhabyte some straunge place, with speciall proviso for theire safetyes, whome pollisy requyreth to have most annoyed, by which meanes the doing of the contrarie shal be imputed to the executors fawlt; yor highnes Ires, patentes being a manyfest shewe that it was not yor majesties pleasure so to have it. After the publick notyse of which fact yor majestie is either to avowe the same (if by the event thereof it shall so seeme good) or to disavowe both them and the fact, as league breakers; leaving them to pretend it as done without yor pryvitie . . .

"This cloake being had for the reigne, the way to worke the feate is to sett forth under such like colour of discoverie certayne shippes of warr to the N.L. which with yor good licence I will undertake without yor majesties charge."

20

George Whetstone, Gent.

thinges: for the winges of mans life are plumed with the feathers of death." T h e letters patent granted to Sir Humphrey on June u , 1578, contain permission to discover and colonize heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people. They authorize him to resist by sea or land attempts at colonization by others within a radius of two hundred leagues of any settlement of his and to confiscate ships found trafficking within these limits. But the last paragraph declares "to all Christian kings, princes and states" that Sir Humphrey is not to "robbe or spoile by Sea or by land, or doe any act of uniust and unlawfull hostilitie." T h e "noble pilgrims" may well have varied in their interpretation of this last paragraph, on account of the suggestion to the Queen a few months before. Furthermore, in July, 1572, Sir Humphrey had led a large company o£ English volunteers on an "unauthorized" expedition into the L o w Countries. Elizabeth had publicly disclaimed any connection with the enterprise, but she had quietly instructed him to occupy Flushing and Sluis. Ostensibly he was assisting the French but actually he was to prevent French occupation o£ these important cities. 27 W h o could tell what that devious hussy — G o d bless H e r Gracious Majesty—meant! Holinshed said they were to plant a colony in Norembega

28

(the

Penobscot valley in M a i n e ) ; D r . Dee thought they were bound for Hocheleya (Montreal). 2 9 T h e list of ships, officers, ordinance, etc., of the expedition says " f o r a discoverye to be made by him," adding that "Captain Sharpam and Mr. Foscue" are near with five ships "bounde on a like viage." Philip Gosse states that Gilbert's purpose was to make an attempt on the home-coming Spanish plate-fleet. 30 Professor T a y lor

31

thinks that Gilbert continued to toy with the idea of a warlike

raid on the Indies. In another passage Taylor has collected contemporary rumor: 27

Conyers Read, Mr. Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth (Oxford, 1925), I, 2 1 2 (based on Cat. S. P. Span., 1 5 6 8 - 1 5 7 9 ) . 28 Holinshed's Chronicles (London, 1808), IV, 534. 29 The Private Diary 0} Dr. John Dee, edited by J. O. Halliwell (Camden Society, London, 1842), p. 4. 30 Philip Gosse, Sir ]ohn Hawkins (London, 1930), p. 148. 31 E. G. R. Taylor, The Original Writings & Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, with an introduction and notes (Hakluyt Society, London, 1935), I. 13.

George Whetstone, Gent.

21

The Spanish ambassador Mcndoza arrived in England in March 1578, to see what Frobisher was about. Early in May he learned that one Stockwell was leaving for a certain island he had discovered, or perhaps to rob the Plate fleet. A week later the rumour was that Gilbert and Sir Henry Knollys had their ships lying in the Thames, ready to go with Stockwell. Mendoza believed, however, that their real objective was Santa Genela ( ? ) , and Gilbert was therefore taking with him a Chaldean "versed in that navigation and language." . . . Early in June it was said that Simon Fernandez, "a great rogue who knows that coast well," would sail with Gilbert and Stockwell, and ten days later Mendoza heard that Captain Cox, who brought back the survivors of Andrew Barker's piratical voyage to the Indies (among the Cimarrones) hoped to be of their company. The Ambassador therefore had this man watched, and in August reported that he had arranged for an English spy to make the voyage, having convinced himself that Gilbert was going on a plundering voyage to the Indies. 32 T h e end of this unfortunate expedition, broken into a number of fragments, was various. Knowles probably continued piracies for some time;

33

Raleigh struck out for the West Indies but apparently got no

farther than the Cape Verde Islands;

34

Gilbert according to Taylor

never got beyond Irish waters, according to Walter R a l e i g h 3 0

35

was

beaten in a fight with some Spanish vessels, according to Bernardino de Mendoza

37

sacked a hermitage in Galicia and appropriated some

cattle. But what of Whetstone? Sir John Gilbert 3 8 in a letter of December 20, 1578, writes to Walsingham that Sir Humphrey "hath all his own ships yet with him, saving one only, wherein Mr. Noell and a brother of Gylberte's were, which had so dangerous a leak as by no means able to performe the voyage." Henry Noell

39

was aboard the Hope,

commanded by Carew

Raleigh, the ship on which Whetstone was one of the gentlemen adventurers. With reasonable luck Whetstone could have reached the 32

Ibid., p. 1 1 6 (taken from Cal. S. P. Span., 1 5 6 8 - 1 5 7 9 , Vol. II). Taylor, op. cit., p. 136, note. Taylor cites the High Court of Admiralty Examination, 13, No. 24. 31 Holinshed's Chronicles (London, 1808), IV, 534. 35 Op. cit., p. 1 1 6 . 36 Walter Raleigh (not the Elizabethan), "The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century," in Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, XII (Glasgow, 1905), 37. 37 Cal. S. P. Span., 1568-1579, Vol. II, report of Sept. 5. 38 Cal. S. P. Col., IX, 7. 39 Slafter, op. cit., p. 254. Slafter's book is made up chiefly of the full papers of which abstracts are supplied in Cal. S. P. Col., IX, 1 ff. 33

22

George Whetstone, Gent.

manor of Walcot in time to share the Christmas festivities with his family. Christmas at home would contrast pleasantly with wintry seas and Sir Humphrey's brawling companions. Except for the publication of his Remembraunce of . . . Sir Nicholas Bacon, who died on February 20, 1578/9, there is no further trace of Whetstone until his trip to Italy in 1580. References to the Italian journey occur in four of Whetstone's subsequent works: An Heptameron of Civill Discourses (1582), The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier (1585), The English Myrror (1586), and The Censure of a Loyall Subject (1587). 40 From these references a partial and tentative itinerary can be supplied, which includes Roane, 41 Turin, "a Garrison town in the Duchy of Millain, neare unto the River of Poo," Bologna, Rome (where he was refused admittance), Naples, Tivoli, Loreto (in the province of Ancona), Ravenna, and Venice. It is possible, too, that Reconati, Ancona, and Leghorn referred to in The English Myrror 4 2 should be added. How much time he spent in Italy is not stated, but a few dates are mentioned. "In the beginning of Nouember 1580,1 returned from Naples to Rome," he tells us, 43 and there is more than one mention of events in Rome in 1580. An Heptameron of Civill Discourses is an account (probably in large part fictitious) of a week spent as a guest in a palace "ten miles from Ravenna towards the river of Poo" at Christmas, 1580.44 An event which occurred earlier in the journey is amusingly recounted in the dedicatory preface of The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier. T o illustrate his statement that "the Spainiard is so insolent, 40 An Heptameron of drill Discourses, near end of "Unto the Friendly Reader" and passim; The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier, in the dedication to Sir William Russell; The English Myrror, pp. 150, 156-58, 165; The Censure oj a Loyall Subject, pp. 58-62 in J. P. Collier's edition. 41 Roanne, in east-central France in the department of Loire. It was a station on the Roman road which ran through the Loire valley to join at Lyon the Seine-Rhone route. Or, less probably, Rouen. 42 Page 157. 43 The English Myrror, p. 156. 44 This reference is slightly confusing, but it seems clearly to refer to 1580. In The English Myrror ("Unto the Friendly Reader") Whetstone states that the events took place at "the Christmas twelve months past." An Heptameron of Civill Discourses, it is true, was not published until 1582, but it was entered in the Stationers' Register on January 1 1 , 1582, and probably was completed by Whetstone around Christmas time in 1 5 8 1 . "Christmas twelve months past" was therefore the Christmas of 1580.

George Whetstone, Gent.

23

and outragious where he ouercometh, as hee is hated to death of those which obaye him for feare," Whetstone there narrates a personal experience. In 1580, he says, one night when he "with one other English Gentleman (who in this commendation will haue his name concealed)" was, with "a worthy Gentleman of Picardie, named Monseur Dobart," lodged "in a Garrison town, in the Duchy of Millain . . . in the middest of supper, a haughtie proude Spaniard" entered and seated himself at their table. In the conversation which developed, Monsieur Dobart asked the Spaniard why the King of Spain had raised so great an army. "The Spaniard forthwith made this proude & insolent aunswere: Ah Sir, the time nowe draweth neare, that we shall haue the spoile of rich England, that u/e shall embrace their faire wiues, and make hauocke of their long gathered riches: And discouering that there was an Englishman in companie, that tollerated these hie wordes, hee beganne spitefully to braue him: But on the soden, the Spaniard found the temper of the English-mans fingers: so that shame, to repaire his disgrace, compelled the Spaniard to offer combat." Whereupon Monsieur Dobart offered himself as the mysterious Englishman's second, and a duel with swords was arranged, to take place at six o'clock on the following morning. Next morning, however, it was discovered that the Spaniard had slipped away during the night. "The English Gentleman could haue no further reuenge, sauing that in the place of this controuersie, finding this Italian sentence to be written: Le parole son femine, & i fatti son maschi. Hee in dispight wrote underneath: Donques gli spanioli son femine, et gli Inglese son maschi." But there were unfortunate aftereffects. "The Spaniard had reuenge inough by the Gentlemans owne contrymen [Roman Catholic refugees?]: for Monseur Dobart (as hee thought to honour him) imparted the accident to certaine Englishmen at Bologna: among whome, there were that so posted the matter to Rome: as when the poore Gent, arriued there, hee was stayed at the gate, nowe called Porto del populi, and there was kept eight daies, hauing no other bed but the bare ground, and well neare starued for want of foode: In fine, all his other Bollitines and Warrants to trauell being taken away. On the sudaine the Stappado [sic] was hanged forth, and the Gentleman upon paine thereof, commanded presently to depart: to whome was deliuered a

24

George Whetstone, Gent.

BoIIitine for Naples." And Whetstone concludes: "What violence hee further sustained, his humour will not agree to open it: for I am sure, he hath bene seldome hard to pursue any mans disgrace, and neuer knowne publikely to bemone his owne hard fortunes, which haue beene many, and violent: and albeit, his name be here concealed, yet if any exception be taken against this report let me be in all places reproued if he euery way approue not the same. And albeit Sir, the matter be in some sort perticular: yet (as I haue sayde) it showeth what a hatred the insolencie of the Spaniard engendreth." Indeed it does. But why was a Frenchman allowed to become a second for an Englishman in a foreign land while a staunch English friend of his sat by in silence? And why must this hero's identity be concealed ? Whetstone seems ready enough now to vouch for him and to be quite positive about all his actions and thoughts. This passage suggests another in Whetstone's address to the friendly reader of An Heptameron of Civill Discourses. He is there praising an Italian Gentleman, but, says he, "Some will (perchance more of envy to hear a stranger commended than of pity to bemoan my hard fortune or foul usage) say I have as just cause to complain of injuries received at Roane, Rome, and Naples as to commend the virtues and good entertainment of Signior Phyloxenus: But to give such suggestioners a double good example both of patience and thankfulness I here protest that as these injuries begun with my hard fortune, so they ended no ways in my discredit: And as I forgive the causes of my mishaps, so scorn I to recount them, to receive amends in a little pity." But it seems a part, at least, of the story slipped through his reticence after all. The boldness of the Englishman who was not there is somewhat enhanced by the fact that the Duchy of Milan was under Spanish domination and that the Englishman had suffered a maimed right hand a few years before. Perhaps the hand was not permanently maimed. The principal literary result of Whetstone's Italian journey was An Heptameron of Civill Discourses (1582). The author informs us that his book is an account of the "exercises" of a group of ladies and gentlemen assembled at a rural mansion during Christmas week in 1580. There are masques, games, and social diversions of many kinds, but the

George Whetstone, Gent.

25

assembled ladies and gentlemen devote most of their time to discussions and stories related to the institution of marriage, in an attempt to discover the way to perfect happiness. The framework of the book is probably in large part fiction, and many of the stories are translations or adaptations of narratives having wide currency. The title is familiar to many students only because the book repeats in the form of a prose tale the plot of Whetstone's play Promos and Cassandra (1578) and is therefore considered another source for Measure for Measure. The Heptameron, to which a later chapter will be devoted, is a more important work than has been generally recognized; it should be thoughtfully examined by all students of Elizabethan life and literature. It contributes little, however, to our knowledge of Whetstone's life, our principal concern in this chapter, beyond the information that he was not yet married at Christmas, 1580. Madame Aurelia, Whetstone's hostess, appoints him, along with a lady about to become a nun, to defend the worthiness of celibacy, remarking that the little haste he makes to marry witnesseth that he honors Hymen with no great devotion. Whetstone, however, tacitly admits that his affections are focused on one lady, and the consuming interest in marriage which the book reveals leads to the suspicion that his marriage probably took place not long after this date. Of his bride we know only that her name was Anne, as revealed by the administration issued to her as a widow shortly after his death. 45 Most of Whetstone's writing time since his return from Italy had probably been devoted to the Heptameron. Not long after its publication early in 1582 he appears to have begun work on his English Myrror group. He apparently interrupted this extensive project in order to produce elegiac metrical lives of Sir James Dyer and Thomas Radcliffe, third Earl of Sussex, who died respectively in 1582 and 1583. A third work of this type was published after the almost simultaneous deaths in 1585 of Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford, and his son. Because of its size Whetstone had difficulty in securing publication 45 Mark Ecclcs, Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 1 9 3 1 , p. 564. T h e letter of administration, as cited by Ecdes, is in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Act Book, 1 5 8 7 1 5 9 1 , f. 46, and was issued on January 3, 1 5 8 7 / 8 . Also referred to in the Hyder E d w a r d Rollins edition (Cambridge, 1 9 2 7 ) of The Paradyse of Dainty Denises, p. lxiv.

26

George Whetstone, Gent.

for The English Myrror, and it became necessary to issue parts of it separately.46 The first unit, A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties and A Touchstone for the Time, appeared in 1584 in a single volume paged continuously. In 1585, when the departure for the Low Countries of the English expeditionary force under the Earl of Leicester was imminent, another section was published under the title The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier. The remainder, still a sizable volume, made its appearance in 1586, as The English Myrror, which is divided into three books, the second and third having separate title pages and dedications. The titles of the three parts are "Conquests of Enuy," "Enuy, Conquered by Vertues," and " A Fortris against Enuy." In the same year the first members of the group, A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties and A Touchstone for the Time, were reissued under the title The Enemie to Unthryftinesse. All of these books deal chiefly with reform, morals, conduct; all express patriotism and concern for the welfare of England. All of them have, as the author frequently informs his readers, been collected and translated from many sources. At the end of A Touchstone for the Time (1584) we are told—rather vaguely, it is true—that Whetstone during the busy years following his return from Italy was again beset with legal difficulties: "But after three yeares & more of costly sute my greeuous oppression (God be therfore praysed) hath pearsed the inclining eares, of the right Honorable and Gracious Judge, the L. Chauncelor of Englande: by whose wisedom & graue judgement, I constantly beleeue, to be releued & released of the toile of L a w : vpon whose commaundement, with all humilitie, reuerence and dutie I attend . . ." Contemporary records now available shed little, if any, light on this litigation. The only facts yet discovered which might possibly apply are these. The will of a Robert Whetstone, gentleman, was filed at Norwich in 1566.47 This may have been George's eldest brother. Then calendars of the feet of fines of Yorkshire show that a suit, involving the lands left to Robert Whetstone by his father's will, had been instituted in 1565 by Ralph and Henry Bosseville against Robert Whet40 The English Myrror, last page; The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier, first page of the dedicatory epistle. 45 Index of Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1 5 5 8 - 1 5 8 } , III, 3 3 5 .

George Whetstone, Gent.

27

48

stone. This suit could mean merely that Robert was selling his land. Titles were amicably transferred in that manner for the purpose of insuring validity. But suits over this same property or parts of it against the heirs of Robert Whetstone continued as late as 1588.49 It may be recalled that all the property left by the elder Whetstone was entailed and that the will, as represented in our abstract, is a highly involved document. But there were also other opportunities for complication. Robert during his minority had been a royal ward, and his property had been placed in the custody of one Robert Reynes, citizen and goldsmith of London. 50 It is possible that prolonged suits against the heirs of Robert Whetstone entangled the affairs of all the immediate family. It is also possible that our documents show only that Robert Whetstone sold his lands to the Bossevilles, who resold parts of it on different occasions. Shall we return to solid ground? The Censure of a Loyall Subject was published shortly before the beheading of Mary Stuart on February 8, 1587, and again shortly after, with slight changes on the final page to include a reference to her beheading. It has much in common with The English Myrror. It describes 48 Feet of Fines o/ the Tudor Period, Vol. II, Part I (Yorkshire Archaological and Topographical Society, Record Series, 1 8 8 7 ) , p. 303: "1565—Easter Term, 7 Elizabeth. Plaintiffs: Ralph Bossevile, esq., and Henry Bosscvile. Deforciant: Robert Whetstone, gent. Nature and situation of the property: Manors of Clayton and Owtcnewton, and 30 messuages and 30 cottages with lands in the same and in Skypsay Broke, Upton, and Essington, also the bailiwick and warpentag of Hedon in Holdernes." J 0 Ibid., Vol. VII, Part III ( 1 8 8 9 ) , p. 4 1 : "1585—Michaelmas Term, 27 and 28 Elizabeth. Plaintiff: Thomas Stephenson. Deforciants: Henry Bossevile, esq., and Elizabeth his wife. Nature and situation of the property: 2 messuages, 3 cottages, and a windmill with lands in Dryngo, Upton, and Browghe, and the Balywick of Dynnesley in Holdernes. A warrant against the heirs of Robert Whetstone." Ibid., p. 98: " 1 5 8 8 — T r i n i t y Term, 30 Elizabeth. Plaintiff: John Boothe. Deforciants: Henry Bossevile, esq., and Elizabeth his wife. Nature and situation of the property: Messuage and a cottage with lands in Dryngo and Browghe. A warrant against the heirs of Robert Whetstone." 50 Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Philip and Mary, • v (1557—1558), 359: "July 1, 1558. Grant to Robert Reynes, citizen and goldsmith of London and goldsmith to the queen, of an annuity of 20 marks to be assigned by the Court of Wards in the manors of Clayton and Overncwton and in all lands in Skipsey and Holdernes, co. York, which were of Robert Whetstone, citizen and Mercer of London, deceased, and are in the crown's hands by the minority of Robert Whetstone, his son and heir; also the custody of the body and marriage of the said heir, to hold until Reynes obtains the effect of the marriage and the annuity during the minority; and so from heir male to heir male. And grant of the annuity from the time of Robert the father's death. By K . and Q . "

28

George Whetstone, Gent.

the executions in September, 1586, of the fourteen men involved in the Babington conspiracy to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and place Mary Stuart on the English throne. The English Myrror had included denunciatory descriptions of all preceding rebellions and conspiracies against the government of Queen Elizabeth. The Censure of a Loyall Subject comes, therefore, as a kind of appendix to bring the account up to date. After the death of Sir Philip Sidney, Whetstone seems to have been somewhat tardy in producing the elegiac metrical life which by now must have been expected of one who had written so many works of that kind. He apparently postponed writing until he had an opportunity to consult his brother Bernard Whetstone, who seems to have been present at the battle of Zutphen when Sir Philip incurred his fatal wound. The two brothers collaborated in writing the elegy. Sidney died on October 16, 1586, and his funeral at St. Paul's was on February 16, 1586/7. But the elegy of the Whetstone brothers was not entered in the Stationers' Register until June 15, 1587, and then Thomas Cadman, the printer, delayed publication until fall. Cadman inserted a letter, following Whetstone's epistle dedicatorie, in which the publisher apologizes for his lateness. It is from this letter that the first news of George Whetstone's death comes. Cadman says, "A gentleman, and servant of your Honors, George Whetstones, had, before his going into the low countries, written, learnedly, an epitaph of his [Sidney's] life and death; although destinie and fate hath too untimely ended his [Whetstone's] daies, yet . . . I thought it my dutie . . . not to deprive the gentleman of that due which his willingnesse and labours did woorthily deserve." Further information about Whetstone's death was added by Mark Eccles 51 when he discovered in 1931 certain letters from Holland among the state papers. The abstracts of these letters, published in the Calendar of State Papers, furnish a reasonably coherent account of the circumstances surrounding Whetstone's death. From Thomas Digges, mustermaster, came a letter to Burghley dated August 16, 1587, which stated in part, "In accordance with your desire, I have received George Whetston as a commissary of musters under me (although all places were furnished) and I hope to have contented him 51

Times Literary Supplement, July 16 and August 27, 1 9 3 1 , pp. 564 and 648.

George Whetstone, Gent.

29

for his entertainment." T h e letter continues, " M y place here purchases me great hatred, both from the captains, whose abuses I may not tolerate, and from the States, whom I have plainly told of their ungrateful dealings with her Majesty. But notwithstanding my pressing them to perfect accounts with her, I cannot draw them to it, or get from them any commissaries to act with those on her part to pass the musters."

52

It is unlikely that Thomas Digges, famous as a mathematician and author of books on accounting, would be over-tolerant in the matter of precise records and accounts. It is equally unlikely that officers under combat conditions would expend much time and patience on such matters. In fact, the custom in our days is to suspend practically all accountability under those circumstances. N o r had Whetstone appeared to be one who could slink away when violence was threatened. Furthermore, he had shown in recent years an increasing preoccupation with ethics and patriotism; one would be surprised to find him ready to compromise on what he would consider a moral issue. T h e storm came. Another letter from Digges to Burghley, dated September 12, 1587, "laments the death of Mr. Whetstone, his commisary of musters, slain by a captain." Digges continued, " I found him indeed so careful, honest, and just, as his death is unto me very grievous"; for although the captains had more than once seriously wounded those w h o attempted to check their accounts, "yet was it his hap to be the first that hath been slain by any captain, being I doubt so much the more hated as he was indeed honest and not to be corrupted."

53

T h i s statement of

Digges seems to have been the nearest approach to an elegy for George Whetstone from whose muse the virtues of so many worthy personages had received "a second life." It will suffice: doubtless he was careful, indeed honest, just, and not to be corrupted. Other letters supply further details. Sir Richard Bingham writing from "Bergen up Z o n e " to Walsingham on September 18 added a postscript: " A f e w days since there happened an ill mischance between Captain Uvedall and a gentleman called Whetstones, who, 'falling out into some speeches overnight, met by chance the next day, and so unknown to any 52

Cal. S. P. For., Vol. XXI, Part III (April-December, 1 5 8 7 ) , p. 244. The abstract from Cal. S. P. For., Vol. XXI, Part III (April-December. 1587), pp. 3 1 1 - 1 2 , has been supplemented here by a quotation from the actual letter (Eccles, op. cit.). 53

30

George Whetstone, Gent.

went themselves without the town, where it was the said Whetstones' chance to be slain,' but the other (it not being done of malice) stands acquitted by martial law and is no danger for it." 84 Sir Richard's report is probably factual except on one point. It is unlikely, after a heated exchange in the evening, that the meeting next morning outside the town was "by chance." Other letters, as we shall see shortly, do not support his belief that Udall was already completely exculpated, but that was probably the general belief when he wrote. On October 14 Edward Burnham, evidently a friend of Udall's, was attempting to persuade Walsingham to intercede in Udall's behalf. Udall was probably a former "servant" of Sir Philip Sidney, and an appeal to Walsingham, Sidney's father-in-law, was to be expected. Burnham wrote: "Capt. Udall is like to lose his company (unless you stand his favourable master) for killing in fight one Whetstone, my lord of Leicester's man or brother to one of his men. [George Whetstone's brother Bernard served under Leicester.] It was Whetstone's own seeking and Udall was cleared by the Council of War. ' A more honester captain, and that keepeth his soldiers in better order, is there not in this land.' I understand that when he was cleared some nobleman [marginal note: Lord North] said he was a good husband and had money, meaning to make a commodity that way of him." 6 5 This seems to mean that Udall was at first cleared by a military court, which would naturally incline to favor a fellow officer over a recently recruited civilian, on the ground that Whetstone was the challenger. T h e case seems, however, to have been reopened by some influential person, who placed Udall again in jeopardy. Who that person was becomes clear in a letter from "Bargen-op-Sone" on June 18, 1588, in which Captain Edmund Udall (alias Uvedall and other variants) complains bitterly to Walsingham of alleged arbitrary and unjust treatment of himself and other captains by Sir Thomas Morgan, who was then governor of Bergen op Zoom. Udall wrote in part: "Lastly, in the matter between Mr. Whetstone and me, wherein I was sifted to the uttermost, and found by all the honourable hearers, that what I did I was forced to, and in defence of 84

55

Cal. S. P. For., V o l . X X I , Part III (April-Deccmbcr, 1 5 8 7 ) , p. 3 2 1 .

Ibid., p. 369.

George Whetstone, Gent.

31

my reputation, Sir. Thos. Morgan, to whom the matter did nothing appertain, put himself into the cause of purpose to take away my life, and gave these judgments, that by law I should be shot to death, and both buried in one pit; if pardoned, to have my company taken from me, and banished; by which means it was long or there could be any better procured for me than banishment, as I can prove by letters of honourable persons, only by his speeches it cost me 100 marks or I had an end." 5 6 How the hundred marks was spent is not revealed. Edmund Udall entered Lincoln's Inn on February 20, 1562/3, 57 and became Master of the Revels there.58 Captain Edmund Udall was a valiant officer whose name appears often in the State Papers and Arthur Collins's Sidney Papers. He was later knighted and became lieutenant governor of Flushing. In fact, Whetstone himself bestowed posthumous praise on Udall in the Sidney elegy; before Whetstone succeeded in getting the elegy printed, Udall had killed the author. In the text of that elegy only the last names appear of those whom Whetstone praises for their valor at Zutphen; a marginal list supplies their initials as well. But Udall's name is significantly omitted from the margin, probably by Thomas Cadman, who was unwilling to tamper with the verse and therefore allowed the name to remain in the text. Though Captain Edmund Udall commends in a letter to Walsingham 59 a kinsman, Jacob Uvedall, who had been with him in the Low Countries and though Sidney in his will directed that a John Udall be reimbursed for some land, there seems to be little room for doubt that the "Udell" commended by Whetstone in the Sidney elegy is Captain Edmund. Whetstone's ill luck did not end with his death. His reputation encountered a singular misfortune in 1777. In that year Doctor John Berkenhout included in his Biographia Literaria some shreds and patches of Whetstone biography for which he was indebted to George Steevens, the Shakespearean commentator, phrasemaker, practical joker, and wag extraordinary. It may be recalled that Steevens omitted the sonnets from an edition of Shakespeare with the explanation that "the strongest act »«Ibid., V o l . X X I , Part I V ( J a n u a r y - J u n e , 1 5 8 8 ) , pp. 4 9 7 - 9 8 . 57 58 ljrcoln's Inn Admissions, p. 7 1 . Uncoln's Inn Black, Pook.s, I, 5 1 9 . 59

Cel. S. P. For.,

V o l . X X I , Part IV ( J a n u a r y - J u n e , 1 5 8 8 ) , pp. 4 9 7 - 9 8 .

32

George Whetstone, Gent.

of parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service." Berkenhout reports that Steevens said of Whetstone, "He is certainly the most quaint and contemptible writer, both in prose and verse, I ever met with." This picturesque asperity stuck. From that day to this it has been the routine ending for accounts of Whetstone. Also in this Steevens-Berkenhout sketch the misinformation that Whetstone turned soldier early in life and was as a result reduced to beggary seems to have originated. Other comments on Whetstone usually quoted are those of Francis Meres and William Webbe. What Meres said was, "These are the most passionate among vs to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of Loue, Henrie Howard Earle of Surrey, sir Thomas Wyat the elder, sir Francis Brian, sir Philip Sidney, sir Walter Rawley, sir Edward Dyer, Spencer, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Whetstone, Gascoyne, Samuell Page sometimes fellowe of Corpus Christi Colledge in Oxford, Churchyard, Bretton." 60 Meres's classification of Whetstone need not surprise readers familiar with The Rocke of Regard and An Heptameron of Civill Discourses. In both books Whetstone showed preoccupation with the said perplexities, and he often adopted "the manner of a complaint." Webbe justly admitted that he was not thoroughly informed; he had been away from London for some time. Since he was writing in 1586, he had probably seen only Whetstone's earlier publications. Then, too, he may have been prejudiced by personal friendship. A Francis Whetstone, presumably George's younger brother, was a student at St. John's College, Cambridge, at the same time that William Webbe was a student there.61 For that matter, Webbe leaves the general impression that he was an enthusiast rather than a critic capable of judicious detachment. Nevertheless his remarks do perhaps to some extent reflect contemporary opinion: A n d once a g a i n e , I a m h u m b l y to desire p a r d o n of the learned c o m p a n y of G e n t l e m e n Schollers, a n d students of the V n i u e r s i t i e s , a n d Innes of C o u r t e , 60 Francis Meres, Pdlladis Tamia (1598), with an introduction by Don Cameron Allen (Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, New York, 1938), p. 284r. 61 "Francis Whetstone, matric, pensioner from St. John's Easter, 1 5 7 3 " (Alumni Cantabrigicntcs, compiled by John Venn and J. A. Venn, Cambridge, 1927, Vol. IV, p. 382). "William Webb, matric. sizar from Trinity, Michs. 1569; B. A. from St. John's, 1 5 7 2 - 3 " (ibid., p. 355).

George Whetstone, Gent.

33

yf I omittc thcyr seuerall commendations in this placc, which I knowc a great number of them haue worthely deserued, in many rare deuises and singuler inuentions of Poetrie: for neither hath it beene my good happe, to haue scene all which I haue hearde of, neyther is my abyding in such place, where I can with facility get knowledge of their workes. One Gentlemen among them notwithstanding may I not ouerslyppe, so farre reacheth his fame, and so worthy is he, if hee haue not already, to weare the Lawrell wreathe, Master George Whetstone, a man singularly well skyld in his facultie of Poetrie. 82 Both Steevcns and W e b b e are wide of the mark—one below, the other above. In our o w n days it is still by n o means easy to arrive at correct estimates of writers of Whetstone's time. The perspective of time leads us in retrospect to take too general a view of the events of the years preceding the rise of Marlowe and Shakespeare. Every year in this period is important when reviewed at a closer range of vision. We cannot remember too clearly that Gosson wrote his attack, and that Sidney and the others wrote their defences of poetry, before the fame of Spenser had been established, and before—however shortly before—the name of Shakespeare had been heard of outside of his native village. They wrote in the darkness—in the worst darkness immediately before the dawn—which had gradually overgrown English literature since the days of Chaucer two centuries before. Our habit of speaking of the Elizabethan Age tends to lead us to overlook the fact that the reign of Elizabeth was divided into two different and quite distinct periods—that of preparation, and that of fulfilment. The first period was the longer of the two. It extended from Elizabeth's accession in 1558 till the execution of Mary Stuart in February i587.° 3 Since Whetstone's life terminated simultaneously with that earlier period, it is hoped that the examination of his writings, to w h i c h the succeeding chapters are devoted, will contribute something toward a better understanding of Elizabethan life and literature in that relatively neglected period. Perhaps the opening lines of John Wytton's commendation of Whetstone's first book still contain a grain of truth : Though Whetston be no carving toole, yet vertue hath it such As will the durest metalls sharpe, though they be dulled much; 62 William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetrie, edited by Edward Arber (English Reprints, No. 26, London, 1 8 7 1 ) , pp. 3 4 - 3 5 . 83 Laurie Magnus, Documents Illustrating Elizabethan Poetry (London, 1906), p. 16.

34

George Whetstone, Gent. And sure the author of this worke, whom wee do Whctston call, T o prove his nature, hits his name, to edge blunt wittes withall. He moves, flyres up, hee whets, he sharpes, ech one doth he invite, In vertuous wise for to approach his castell of delight.

The T^ocke of

Regard

I

N 1576 Whetstone published his first book, The Roc\e of Regard. It is divided into four parts, called respectively "The Casde of Delight," "The Garden of Unthriftinesse," "The Arbour of Vertue," and "The Ortchard of Repentance." The names of the four parts, however, do not always accurately describe their contents. The book appears to have been made up of occasional, unrelated compositions in verse and prose which the author has attempted without complete success to classify and arrange under appropriate headings. A particular piece may not resemble others of its group, or the general title of a section may be misleading. The first part, "The Castle of Delight," for example, consists of three pieces, the first two of which are metrical complaints of notorious women —Bianca Maria and Cressid. Whetstone then guilelessly explains, "Good reader (to continue thy delight) I have made a chaunge of thy exercise of reading bad verse, with the proffer of worsser prose." And the third piece is a romantic prose tale of the innocent love of Rinaldo and Giletta, containing brief poems by the amorous Rinaldo. The third piece is unrelated to the first two, and the reason for calling the section "The Castle of Delight" is still not clear. The title page explains that this section reports "the wretched end of wanton and dissolute liuing," a statement which seems inconsistent with the title and is true only of the first two sections. The second part, "The Garden of Unthriftinesse," begins with a "dolerous discourse" in "fourteeners" supposedly uttered by one Dom Diego suffering the agonies of unrequited love. It is followed by two or three pages of prose relating the events which led his lady to relent; then comes "Dom Diego His Triumphe" in joyful six-line stanzas. The rest of the section, consisting of numerous shorter pieces in various metrical patterns, deals in general with the discomforts of love. In the third part, "The Arbour of Vertue," a versified tale of Lady

36

The Roc\e of Regard

Barbara, a model of marital fidelity, consumes most of the space; the tale is followed by brief pieces of verse which in turn sing the praises of half a dozen English ladies. For the first time the title of a section seems entirely relevant. "The Ortchard of Repentance," the fourth part of the book, is almost as long as the other three combined. The opening piece presents, in 119 rime-royal stanzas, a dying beggar who narrates his life and denounces the evils of the world. Various non-amatory poems follow, and the book ends with a long autobiographical account in which prose and verse alternate. Whetstone's first preface, like that of Gascoigne's Posies, is addressed " T o all the young Gentlemen of England"; it is youth to whom he chiefly dedicates "the fruite of my travell." In a second preface he adjures us to "thinke that the good and the badde in this booke is to forewarne youth, and to recreate the stayed: and thinke that my beginning with delight, running on in unthriftines, resting in vertue, and ending with repentaunce, is no other than a figure of the lustie yonkers adventures; who beginneth to seeke preferment with delightful braverie, and being entred into the hie way of unthriftines, findeth his journey so pleasant that, ere he is a ware, he posteth his poore purse out of hart with prodigalitie: so that (unlesse he meane to tyre him to death) he must rest both his purse and raunging fancies, with some vertuous and stayed determination of life; and yet, when all is done, late repentaunce must recover his, and his pursses surfet." And there we probably have not only the author's plan for his book but also a rather ingenuous summary of his own early life and the lives of many other young gentlemen of his generation. Whetstone, however, posed as a reformed rake, largely perhaps because such a pose was fashionable. Writers of the time usually trailed a pike in the Low Countries, Scotland, or Ireland, living harum-scarum lives between military engagements. Having later subdued the evil in themselves, they then wished to universalize the conquest. All of them were, to a greater or lesser degree, victims of the hedonic paradox. Like Geoffrey Fenton, Barnabe Rich, George Gascoigne, Arthur Golding, Thomas Churchyard, George Turbervile and a host of other writers of

The Rocke of Regard

37

his generation, Whetstone shows interest in reforming the world. The Renaissance with its passion for the litterae humaniorcs of the ancients had revived also a passion for sensual experience and a joyous curiosity about the business of living. For a time most writers wandered in "the labyrinth of sensuality." This zeal for the aesthetic in each of them came after a while into conflict with the insistence on personal morals and religion engendered by the Reformation, the rising Puritanism of the time. There was as yet no Milton among them; even Spenser had not yet effected his partial reconciliation. The inability completely to reconcile the moral with the aesthetic impulse resulted in mental conflicts for writers and a period of skepticism and despair. They became addicted to "the familiar delusion of the used-up man that the world is going to the dogs." Then, having repented their evil ways and renounced their wickedness, they confessed their former sins, ostensibly for the benefit of posterity, and became sage counselors. There were varying degrees of honesty in this attitude: Whetstone perhaps was partially sincere. But in all of them a reader suspects at times a lingering hankering after the fleshpots, a Byronic pride in their youthful extravagances. Having squandered youth and patrimony, they sought to redeem and rehabilitate themselves. Literary success, then as now, appeared easy. Literary success, also, might well be accompanied by preferment at court. So literature it was. Sword in hand and pen in ear, they pained themselves "to countrefete chere of Court" and they missed few opportunities to ingratiate themselves with persons of wealth and influence. Whetstone followed the crowd. Having intimated in his preface to The Roc\e of Regard his compensatory conclusion that he lives in an evil and unjust world against the pitfalls of which he should warn heedless youth, Whetstone proceeds in the first piece of verse to reveal a second significant trend: he is to be another Italianate Englishman, an importer of literary materials and ideals from the warm south. This first piece he calls "The Disordered Life of Bianca Maria, Countesse of Celaunt, in Forme of Her Complainte, Supposed at the Houre of Her Beheading for Procuring the Murder of Ardissino Valperga, Earle of Massino." The title of the first section of the book, "The Castle of Delight," suggests Painter's Palace

38

The Roc\e of Regard

of Pleasure. And it was in The Palace of Pleasure apparently that he encountered the story of the scandalous Countess.1 He could have read the same story in the novels of Bandello,- who seems to have written it first, or in Belieferest,3 who had translated Bandello and was Painter's immediate source, or in Geoffrey Fenton's Tragical Discourses.* But details, such as the wording of his title and his spelling of proper names, indicate that it was Painter whom he followed. Whetstone, however, was not merely copying; he converted Painter's bare prose talc into a rime-royal "complaint" in the manner of the Mirror for Magistrates, a complaint delivered, we are to suppose, from the scaffold on the occasion of her beheading. He also inserted "An Invective Written by Roberto Sanseverino, Earle of Giazzo, against Bianca Maria, Countesse of Celant." The story of the Countess was subsequently used by Marston as the main plot for his Insatiate Countess. Whetstone's second piece has much in common with the first. He is again writing the "complaint" of a lascivious lady whose sins have found her out; again, too, he is using a widely disseminated story but in a relatively recent version. Though Chaucer is mentioned in this "Cressids Complaint," Whetstone's Cressid is a leprous, repentant hag derived from Henryson. The latter two-thirds of "The Castle of Delight" section is devoted to a romantic love story called "The Discourse of Rinaldo and Giletta." It has been compared with Gascoigne's "Pleasant Fable of Ferdinando Jeronimi and Leonora de Valasco." They do have points of resemblance. Each claims an Italian source: Gascoigne states that he is translating 1

In The Second Tome oj the Palace of Pleasure by William Painter, edited by Joseph Haslewood (London, 1 8 1 3 ) , the Twenty-fourth Novel is "The Disordered Life of the Countesse of Celant . . ." In William Painter, The Palace of Pleasure, edited with an introduction by Hamish Miles (London, 1929), it appears in Vol. Ill as the Ninetieth Novel. 2 Matteo Bandello, Novelle, Part I, Vol. I (Milan, 1 8 1 3 ) , Novella IV; Hamish Miles, introduction to his edition of Painter, The Palace oj Pleasure, I, xxv. 3 Mary Augusta Scott, Elizabethan Translations from the Italian (New York, 1 9 1 6 ) , p. 34, cites "Belleforest. 1565. No. 20." Emil Koeppel, Studien zur Geschichte der italieneschen Novelle in der englischen Litteratur des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts (Strassburg, 1892), p. 30, also cites "Belleforest 20." 4 Bandello, Tragical Tales, the Complete Novels, translated by Geoffrey Fenton, with an introduction by Langton Douglas, edited by Hugh Harris (Broadway Translations, London, 1924?), Seventh Tale.

The Rocf^e of Regard

39

"out of the Italian riding talcs of Bartello," an author k n o w n only to Gascoignc, while Whetstone says, " T h i s discourse was first written in Italian by an unknowne authour." Whetstone's f o r m also is perhaps imitated from Gascoigne's, although the prose romance interspersed with love poems addressed to the heroine is by no means novel. In plot material and tone, however, the two stories vary widely. Gascoigne's is probably, in part at least, autobiographic; Whetstone's seems to be pure fiction. Gascoigne tells of a scandalous affair with a married woman of wide experience with other lovers; though he employs the courtly-love attitudes and conventions, he is cynically humorous and risque. T h e object of Whetstone's knightly lover is matrimony. But he wins the lady only after surmounting an appropriate number of obstacles, most of them devilishly designed by a rival, ultimately to be disposed of in a trial by combat. T h e author maintains a reverential attitude throughout the story except for a single lapse; when the hero decides to escape despair by drowning himself, w e learn that he, "after he had a while felt the furie of the floudes, was wearie of dying, so that for life he laboured unto the shoare; which happily recovered, he felt his stomacke at that instant rather overcharged with water then love."

5

After their

many trials the lovers are happily united and the story ends serenely,

"El fine fa el tutto." These works are probably significant in one of the lines of evolution which English literature was following. Writers made so many translations—thereby promoting the general education of the English—that sometimes the age seemed to be becoming merely one of translation. T h e next step is that of original composition imitating the methods observed in the translations and sometimes pretending to be translations. This process is often observed in drama, but it is perhaps equally important in other fiction. T h e second section of the book, " T h e Garden of Unthriftinesse," begins with " D o m Diego His Dolerous Discourse." In writing of D o m Diego, Whetstone was dealing with a character probably about as familiar to contemporary readers of fiction as his Cressid or Countess of 5 Koeppel (op. cit., p. 33, note) points out the resemblance to Orlando Furioso, Canto VI, Stanza 5.

40

The Rocfc of Regard

Celaunt had been. The story of Dom Diego and Genevora had been told by Bandello, Belleforest, Painter, and Fenton.6 Whetstone, therefore, is not interested in retelling the story. He supplies a brief prose synopsis to refresh the reader's memory and to provide settings for his two metrical pieces: one, a song of despair after Dom Diego's rejection by his lady; the other, of joy over her ultimate acceptance of him. Further evidence of the familiarity of the story appears in the reference to Dom Diego in the song "The Louer wounded with his Ladies beauty craveth mercy. T o the Tune of where is the life that late I led" printed in Thomas Proctor's Gorgious Gallery of Gallant Inventions (1578): Not wofull Monsier dom Dieg Or Priams noble sonne, Constrayned by loue, did ever mone As I for thee haue donne. Sir Romeus annoy But trifle seemes to mine . . .

Perhaps by 1596 Dom Diego had become somewhat less familiar, for in that year R[ichard] L[inche] wrote the whole story over again in some 156 Venus-and-Adonis stanzas under the title "The Love of Dom Diego and Gyneura," with which was printed his sonnet sequence "Diella." Francis Meres's list of those writers "most passionate among vs to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of loue" includes Surrey, Wyatt, Sir Francis Brian, Sidney, Raleigh, Dyer, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Shakespeare, Whetstone, Gascoigne, Samuel Page, Churchyard, and Breton. Though Meres may have had in mind An Heptameron of Civill Discourses, it seems likely that he was thinking of The Rocke of Regard, particularly of the latter part of "The Garden of Unthriftinesse." "Dom Diego His Triumphe" is followed by thirty-one poems, all but two or three of them bewailing and bemoaning the perplexities of love. Meres's mention of Whetstone in the same breath with the author of the sugared 6 La prima parte de le novelle del Bandello (London, 1740), I, 188-203; William Painter, The Palace of Pleasure, edited by Joseph Jacobs (London, 1890), III, 222-87; Certain Tragical Discourses of Bandello, translated by Geoffrey Fenton, with an introduction by Langton Douglas (London, 1898), II, 2 3 7 - 3 1 3 . Koeppel, op. cit., p. 3 1 , cites "Belleforest 1 8 . "

The Rocke of Regard

41

sonnets might be cited as another example of the dangers which await the critic who follows truth too close at the heels; nevertheless our young man did here and there in this section arrive at a felicity of expression somewhat above his usual average. T h e following verses in a sort of simplified Mariana-in-the-moated-Grange motif, for example, are by no means contemptible: A Gentlewoman falsely deceived with faire wordes forsweareth hereafter to be wonne with flattering promises. Give me my worke that I may sit and sowe And so escape the traines of trustlesse men; I finde too true, by witnesse of my woe, How that faire wordes with faithles works they blen, Much Syren like, with sweete inticing call, W e sillie dames to witch, and wray in thrall. 0 cruell friend! whose false of faith I rue, Thou forcest me to count all men unjust, For if that vow or othe might make one true, Thou usedst such as well might force to trust: But I, betrayed by too farre trusting thee, Will henceforth take faire words even as they be. 1 will be deafe, though thousands sue for grace, My sight as dym, if sights in silence plead; Salt teares no ruth within my heart shall place, For this shall be my song, and dayly reade, Poore, 1, that liv'd in thraldome lmc\t of yore, Unbound at length, will learne to love no more. The concluding couplet of the epilogue of this section of the book suggests Meres's phrase and is at the same time accurately descriptive of the entire section: Wherefore these toyes, who lists to read aright, Shall finds Loves woes; not how to love I write. T h e third section, "The Arbour of Vertue," is dedicated to "Lady Jane Sibilla Greye, n o w of Wilton." It consists of a tale in seven-beat couplets, "Lady Barbaraes Vertuous Behaviours," and short poems in praise of various ladies.

42

The Roc\e of Regard

The story of Lady Barbara is of a familiar type represented in Cymbeline, Westward for Smelts, and Boccaccio's Story Nine of the Second Day in the Decameron. It occurs in numerous variations and in many languages. The common ingredients are a husband who boasts of his wife's fidelity, a villain who wagers that he can seduce her, and an unassailable wife. Beyond these ingredients Whetstone's story seems to have nothing in common with Cymbeline. Whetstone's immediate source is clearly the Lady of Boeme story in Painter's Palace of Pleasure? Painter had in turn taken the story from Bandello.8 Whetstone followed Painter's story closely, preserving all proper names unchanged, and rarely departing from Painter in other details. It was apparently here too that Whetstone found Corvinus, King of Hungary, who later became a character in Promos and Cassandra, as well as Ulrico, the king's trusted counselor in the same play. Massinger used the Lady of Boeme story for his play The Picture; the plot is, however, considerably altered and complicated. Apparently Massinger's only source was Painter.9 This third section was intended for the perusal of ladies. The story is a kind of exemplum extolling fidelity and other matronly virtues; the poems in praise of contemporary ladies serve the same general purpose by citing virtuous examples. Whetstone gallantly asserts of each of them in turn that she possesses great physical and spiritual beauty. Several of them can be readily identified even now; probably all of them could in 1576. The first, "the right H. the Ladie I. S. G. of Wilton," is obviously the Lady Jane Sibylla Grey to whom the whole section is dedicated. She was at this time the second wife of Arthur Grey, fourteenth Baron Grey de Wilton, the Artegal of the Faerie Queene. Born abroad presumably while her father, Sir Richard Morrison, was on a foreign mission, she was naturalized in 1575/6, shortly before Rocfe of Regard was printed. The Dictionary of National Biography erroneously states that she was the widow of Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford, who lived until 1585. She was instead the widow of his eldest son, Edward Russell, who died shortly after their marriage in 1571. 10 7

Miles edition, Vol. IV, Ninety-fourth Novel, pp. 53-72. La prima parte de le novelle (London, 1740), Vol. I, Novella XXI, pp. 138 ff. Alfred Merle, Massingers The Picture und Painter, II, 28 (Halle, 1905). 10 G. E. C., The Complete Peerage, new edition revised and much enlarged by the Hon-

8

9

The Rocke of Regard

43

The second lady, "My L . E. R.," seems to be Elizabeth Russell, who was at this time the wife of John, Lord Russell, the second son of the Earl of Bedford. She was one of the famous daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke. Her sister Mildred, praised by Ascham for her learning, became Burghley's second wife in 1545. Another sister was Ann, wife of Nicholas Bacon and mother of Francis Bacon. Elizabeth first married Sir Thomas Hoby, translator of Castiglione's Courtier. He died in 1566, and in 1574 she married John, Lord Russell. She had a reputation for piety and linguistic attainments. 11 "My L . Cecil of Burleigh," whose praises are sung in the third poem, is obviously the wife of William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Burghley's first wife, Mary Cheke, sister of Sir John Cheke, had died in 1544. In 1545 Burghley married, as was stated in the preceding paragraph, Mildred, eldest daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. Her father, preceptor to Edward VI, was almost as distinguished a scholar as John Cheke, the tutor of the boy king. "Maistresse M. H . now Brydges" was Mary, the daughter of Sir Owen Hopton, lieutenant of the Tower of London. She was now married to William Brydges, who in 1593/4 was to succeed his brother as fourth Baron Chandos of Sudeley. Whetstone's designation suggests that the marriage had recently taken place, as does the fact that her son Grey Brydges, who was to become the fifth Lord Chandos, was born about 1579. She is not to be confused with the Lady referred to in Gascoigne's "Praise of the Fair Bridges," said to be Catherine, daughter of Edmond, second Lord Chandos, wife of Lord Sands. 1 2 The evidence concerning the next two ladies, "Mistresse A . C." and "Mistresse A . H.," seems now insufficient to supply positive identification. Annes, Agneses, and Alices are innumerable. We learn from the poem only that A . C. is married and that "in court her roume is hie." Earlier in this book, it has been conjectured that she was Anne Cecil, Burghley's daughter. Similarly of A. H . the evidence is slight—only that she is a maid and, less clearly, that she lives far away. The verses to A . H. were perhaps more personal, if more enigmatic, than those to orable Vicary Gibbs, now edited by H. A. Doubleday, Duncan Warrand, and Lord Howard dc Waldcn (London, 1926), II, 76-77; VI, 186. 11 12 Dictionary of National Biography. Percy's Reliques (Edinburgh, 1858), II, 1 1 6 .

44

The Roc\e of Regard

other ladies. She could conceivably be the Anne who as George Whetstone's widow was granted letters of administration in 1587. The concluding verses, "The Saucie Pesaunts Present unto His Sovereigne Mistress," seem to be directed to Lady Jane Sibylla Grey, presenting the book to her and offering sage advice. "The Ortchard of Repentance," the fourth and last section of The Roc/p of Regard, is much the longest. The purpose announced by the author is to report "the miseries of dice, the mischiefes of quarrelling, and the fall of prodigalitie," as well as "the deceits of all sortes of people." T o this end he assembled a varied assortment of his metrical compositions, pertinent or otherwise. "The Ortchard of Repentance" is dedicated to Thomas Cecil, eldest son of Burghley by Mary Cheke. He afterward became first Earl of Exeter and, on the death of his father, became the second Lord Burghley. Whetstone gives as the reason for the dedication his gratitude: ". . . waying howe deepely bothe my good mother, and all her children are bounde unto you for received friendships, among the rest (acknowledging your desire of my well doing) I have sought howe (for suche benefites) to avoyde the vile vice of ingratitude." Thomas Cecil had been Member of Parliament for Stamford, where the Cecil home was, three times before this dedication was written and was in later years Member of Parliament for Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. "The Honest Minded Mans Adventures, His Largesse, and His Farewell to the World; a Worke Discovering the Subtilties of All Sortes of Men," with which this fourth section begins, is written in the first person, but the speaker is A crooked peece with withered age forworne In drouping dayes whome beggerie pursuth.

The four parts into which the title is divided by punctuation marks describe the four divisions of the piece with fair accuracy. The first part which describes his "adventures" has often been cited as autobiography. It is, in fact, probably entirely fictitious. The speaker first tried without success for advancement at court. Next he became a soldier, and after a short time was promoted to a higher rank in the army. The usual assumption that this refers to service by Whetstone himself in the Low

The Rocke of Regard

45

Countries in 1572 appears to be erroneous. A gloss refers to it as " H i s seconde adventure in the warres." But after a time When wounded flesh did faint at bloudy blowes. . . . Forworne with toile, I homeward trudgst in haste, My skinne well paide with woundes and bruses sore, But sure of pence, I had but slender store. Persuaded n o w that life at court was costly, and that the wars yielded nought but honor, the veteran concluded My way to thrive was tilling of the feeld; A charge, God wott, unmeete for mee to wield; A farmer fresh, I fell then to the plow, And coste abridgst, yet cares I had ynow. I then did trust the trueth of every swayne, And though that I a sight of lubbers kept, When others housd, my way lay sowst in raine, My corne did shead before the same was reapt, Or spoild with beastes, whilst lasie Robin slept, I bought at worst, yet sould I under foote; A poore increase can spring of such a roote. Soon his resources were so depleted that he must abandon f a r m i n g and seek financial relief f r o m his friends. T h e n by means of a dream allegory the "honest minded m a n " tells h o w he was tempted to follow dishonest courses in the pursuit of wealth. B u t his religious convictions enabled him to withstand temptation. T h e n the d y i n g m a n concludes his task of instructing youth by "discovering the subtilties of all sortes of men." In " G . W . Opinion of T r a d e s (as T o u c h i n g G a i n e ) Written to H i s Especiall F r i e n d , Maister R [ o b e r t ] C f u d d e n ] , " Whetstone considers in turn, ostensibly for purposes of vocational guidance, the opportunities for gain offered the merchant, the f a r m e r , the courtier, the soldier, the scholar, the physician, the clergyman, and the lawyer. A marginal note indicates that the last three are those "of surest g a i n , " and the concluding line states that " T h e lawe for gaine doth beare the bell a w a y . " T h e next poem, by H [ e n r y ] C f a n t r e l l ] , is a reply to the foregoing, in which Cantrell objects to Whetstone's defeatist attitude in showing course with cares affraight." H e says of Whetstone's muse that

"each

46

The Roc1{c of Regard She tellcs the toyles of all, And forgeth fates t'attend estates, That seeld or never fall.

There is also "A Breifc Discourse of the Discommodities of Quarrelling, Written at the Request of His Especiall Friend and Kinseman, Maister Robert Cudden of Grayes In." In several brief conventional poems which follow, Whetstone discusses hope, denounces arrogance, ingratitude, and avarice, and provides "a briefe description of death." Then there is "An Epitaphe upon the Death of Henry Cantrell, of Lincolnes Inne, Gent.; by His Friend R[obert] C[udden]." Henry Cantrell of Norfolk, "late of the barr. of Furnivalls Inn," was admitted to Lincoln's Inn on March 5,1574/5. 1 3 No records of Furnival's are available. Another sententious poem urges young men to seek the companionship of their superiors. There is also "An Epitaphe on the Death of the Right Worshipful Maister Robert Wingfield, of Upton in the Countie of Northampton, Esquier," further indicating connections with the Inns of Court and the north of England. This is probably the Robert Wingfield who, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, was the son of a speaker of the House of Commons and who married in 1530 the daughter of the Lord Mayor of London. The Wingfield arms are said to be still in the fourth window on the north side of Gray's Inn Hall. According to Whetstone, Wingfield was a justice for fifty-two years. The next "epitaph" is that of "the right worshipfull maister John Ayleworth, Esquier," probably a friend of the Whetstone family. He is mentioned in the inquisition post mortem of the elder Whetstone as having leased some property in London. Then there is "An Epitaph, in the Order of an Admonition, Written on the Death of His Verie Friend, John Note, of Grayes Inne, Gent. Untimely Slaine the 2 of November 1575"—in which a large part of the elegy is consumed in making puns on the unfortunate young man's name. Another elegy is for Thomas Cornelius, slain in Holland. These elegies, though of negligible value, are forerunners of the metrical lives of departed notables, for which Whetstone later came to be known. An invective against dice provides amusing glimpses of the London 13

The Records of the Honorable Society of Lincoln's A.D. 1420 (Lincoln's Inn, 1896), I, 82.

Inn . . . Admissions

from

The Roc\e °f Regard

47

underworld, and "Fiftie Apples of Admonition" would doubtless have been accorded unstinted approval by Polonius. R[obert] C[udden]'s "Caveat to G . W. at His Going into Fraunce," apparently written on the eve of a pleasure trip, warns George not to make himself ridiculous on his return by imitating French manners and customs. In the inevitable dream allegory, "Whetstons Dreame," the author, guided by gray-bearded Patiencc, views the evils of the court, the church, the army, and the law and then vividly describes the baneful results of the system of inclosures. Unimportant biographical hints are discernible passim, but by far the greater part of the apparently autobiographical information, as was stated in the first chapter, is to be found in the last piece in The Rocfe of Regard—"Inventions of P. Plasmos." Whetstone is ostensibly editing fragmentary work of another, but the mythical Plasmos bears suspicious resemblances to the editor. The author provides fictitious names for himself and his characters; it is also impossible to determine where sober fact leaves of? and fiction begins. He apparently tells in "Inventions of P. Plasmos" that he has been prosecuted for slander; 1 4 he seems now to be keeping cautiously within the law. At the end of denunciatory passages he systematically disclaims any malicious intent or any desire to harm innocent persons. Even "The Honest Minded Mans Adventures" with which the fourth part of the book begins may contain bits of autobiography. Whetstone at the close of A Touchstone for the Time says that he has related his own experiences "in the ende of my booke intituled The rocke of regarde." But we cannot for that reason assume that the whole book is autobiography, and Whetstone's reference there is indubitably to "Inventions of P. Plasmos," which appears at the end of the book. The decrepit beggar in "The Honest Minded Mans Adventures" is clearly not Whetstone. Among the scattered autobiographical hints to be found elsewhere in the book are the names of a number of friends and the reference to a contemplated visit to France. In " A Brief Discourse of the Discommodities of Quarrelling" he informs his readers that he himself incurred as the result of a quarrel a maimed hand of which he has lost the use. All the dedications in this book are dated October 15,1576, "from my lodging 14

J. P. Collier's reprint (1870) of The Rock.' of Regard, pp. 296-97.

48

The Roc\e of Regard

in Holborne." It is quite possible, as was intimated in the first chapter, that Whetstone was a student at Furnival's Inn at the time. One of the poems bears the title "Fiftie Apples of Admonition, Late Growing on the Tree of Good Government: Bestowed on His Especiall Friends and Companions, the Gentlemen of Furnivals In." Several others suggest in one way or another connection with the Inns of Court. This book several times anticipated Whetstone's next work, Promos and Cassandra. Corvinus, King of Hungary, and Sir Ulrico, his agent, as was pointed out before, are characters in "Lady Barbaraes Vertuous Behaviours." John Androynes appears also in "Whetstons Dreame." In both this work and Promos and Cassandra he is a symbol of the innocent rustic, the tenant farmer victimized by his superiors. A Latin version of the Golden Rule, used prominently in Promos and Cassandra, and doubtless ultimately suggesting in part the title of Measure for Measure, appears also in the complaint of Pimos, the lawyer: Hoc facias alteri quod vis tibi fieri. There is little if any evidence that The Roc\e of Regard was a popular book; it seems not to have been reissued in Elizabethan times. Gabriel Harvey, however, seems to have liked at least parts of it. Into his copy of Gascoigne's Posies, The Steele Glass, and Complaint of Philomene (bound together), he copied with evident approval extended passages from "The Honest Minded Mans Adventures" and the "Inventions of P. Plasmos." 1 5 In this last section of The Roc^e of Regard there is perhaps more material which would appeal to the general reader than in the first three, though there is much repetition and overlapping of themes. Whetstone's general treatment of ingratitude, envy, death, and similar abstractions often reflects preoccupations of the Elizabethans and remotely suggests Shakespeare's concern with the same topics. His sympathy for the common man is expressed frequendy with a degree of sincerity somewhat surprising in one who never omits "gentleman" after his own name and is clearly writing for the ruling class. His pictures of the low life of the times are often presented with a clarity and sardonic humor which retain their appeal. His "Invective against Dice," for example, contains a lively 15 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, upon-Avon, 1 9 1 3 ) , pp. 1 7 0 - 7 3 .

collected and edited by G. C. Moore Smith (Stratford-

The Roct{e of Regard

49

description of a contemporary crap g a m e in a b a w d y tavern, including the imprecations and pleadings addressed to the b o u n d i n g cubes. T h e wiles of a courtesan are " d i s c o v e r e d " through the experiences of the w i n n e r at the dice g a m e : Then roists he in his ratling silks, And sorts with Venus dames, Whose luring lookes inforce his heart T o frie in Cupids flames. T o traine him in, he shall injoy Eche outward show of blisse: In secrete sport they wilbe coy, They feare to do amisse. A sute of laune my lady lackes, Or else some trifling cheane; A cawle of gold and other knackes, My novis purse must gleane. T h e haggard, then, that checkt of late, Will stoupe to fancies lure, And inward bend at every becke, N o storme shall chaunge procure. Her cristall eyes shall still be fixt, T o stare uppon his face; Her daintie armes shall try their force Her lover to imbrace; Her rubie lippes by stelth shee will Bee joyning unto his, With courage vaunst her friend to force T o fall to Venus blisse. Then will shee play Galatheas part, T o make his joy more sweete, By striving yceld, who never thought From such devise to fleete. T o frame excuse for late offence, The queene will cog apace, She will alledge his sugred woordes, His galant giftes of grace So wrought within her horish minde, As naught availde defence For to withstand his sharpe assaultes: Shee lyes, it was his pence.I6 10

T h e italics are Whetstone's.

50

The Roc\e of Regard

Whetstone's contribution to the 1578 edition of The Paradyse of Dainty Deuises 1 7 belongs clearly to the period of The Roc^e of Regard. T h e title is "Verses Written of 20. Good Precepts, at the Request of His Especiall Good Freend & Kinseman, M. Robart Cudden of Grayes Inne." Robert Cudden, who imposed on his "freend and kinseman" this exercisc in versifying, is doubtless the author of the commendatory verse " R . C. in Praise of Whetstone and His Rocke of Regard." Other verses having to do with Cudden in The Roc\e of Regard are entitled: "G. W . Opinion of Trades (as Touching Gaine) Written to His Especiall Friend, Maister R. C."; " A Briefe Discourse of the Discommodities of Quarrelling, Written at the Request of His Especiall Friend and Kinseman, Maister Robert Cudden of Grayes In"; " A n Epitaphe upon the Death of Henry Cantrell, of Lincolnes Inne, Gent.; by His Friend R. C."; and " A Caveat to G . W. at His Going into Fraunce: Written by His Friend R. C." T h e phrase Formae nulla fides used often 1 8 as a signature by Whetstone in this period crops up again at the conclusion of his verses in The Paradyse of Dainty Deuises. Professor Rollins explains 1 9 that it is "an adaptation from Juvenal, ii, 8. fronti nulla fides." "Verses Written of 20. Good Precepts" is also in large part a duplication of verses appearing in The Roc\e of Regard under the title "Fiftie Apples of Admonition." The didactic element in both derives largely from Dionysius Cato's Disticha moralia. The first two of Whetstone's twenty precepts, for example, are "Sarue God" and "Obey Thy Prince." The first line of his "Fiftie Apples of Admonition" reads: "Serve, love, and dread you God on high, obey your prince on earth." The first of the brief precepts which precede the distiches of Cato is ltaque deo supplica, and on the same page 2 0 occurs Magistrum metue. The verbal resemblance between "Verses Written of 20. Good Precepts" and "Fiftie Apples of Admonition" however, is extremely slight. They are inde17

Pages 108-11 in the excellent edition edited by Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge,

1927).

18 Six times in The Rocke of Regard (1576): on the four title pages and on pp. 91 and 218; at the end of his commendation of Timothy Kendall's Floweret of Epigrammes ( 1 5 7 7 ) ; and on the title pages of A Remembraunce of . . . George Gaskpigne (1577), Promos and Cassandra (1578), An Heptameron of Civill Discourses (1582), A Remembraunce of . . . Sir James Dier (1582), and A Remembraunce of . . . Thomas Late Earle of Sussex (1583). 19 20 Op. cit., p. 263. Catonis disticha moralia (1526), sig. A3r.

51

The Roc\e of Regard

pendent compositions with overlapping content. As Professor Rollins has pointed out, 2 1 many of the other precepts in The Paradyse

of

Dainty

Deuises selection seem to be identifiable in some degree among either the precepts or the distiches of Cato; in fact, possibly sixteen out of twenty appear there. 21

Op. cit., pp. 2 6 0 - 6 3 .

Tromos and Qassandra

W

HETSTONE is rarely mentioned in our time except as the author of Promos and Cassandra, a cumbersome play in two parts of five acts each, which contains the main outlines of the plot of Measure for Measure. T h e information that his reputation in future times was to be sustained almost solely by this play would doubtless have occasioned the author some surprise. H e seems to have had no great confidcncc in his ability to write plays; this is the only one ascribed to him. Probably he published it only after it had been rejected for the stage. Four years after its publication, when he converted it into a prose tale and included it in his Heptameron of Civill Discourses, he informs us that it had "never yet been presented upon the stage." T h e circumstances attending its hurried publication are explained in the epistle dedicatorie: To his worshipfull friende, and Kinseman, William Fleetewoode Esquier, Recorder of London. Syr, (desirous, to acquite your tryed friendships, with some token of good will:) of late I perused divers of my unperfect workes, fully minded I bestowe on you, the travell of some of my forpassed time. But (resolved to accompanye the adventurous Captaine, Syr Humfrey Gylbert, in his honourable voiadge,) I found my leysure too littel, to correct the errors in my sayd workes. So that (inforced) I lefte them disparsed, amonge my learned freendes, at theyr leasure, to polish, if I faild to returne: spoyling (by this meanes) my studdy of this necessarye furnyture. Amonge other unregarded papers, I fownde this Discource of Promos and Cassandra: which . . . I devided . . . into two Comedies. . . . although the worke (because of evel handlinge) be unworthy your learned Censure, allowe (I beseeche you) of my good wyll, untyl leasure serves me, to perfect, some labour of more worthe. No more, but that, almightye God be your protector, and preserve me from dainger, in this voiadge, xxix. of Iuly. 1578. Your Kinsman to use, George Whetstone.

Promos and Cassandra

53

T w o days later, on the last day of July, license was granted in the Stationers' Register to Richard Jones to print "the famous historié of Promos and Cassandra Devided into twoe Comicall Discourses Compiled by George Whetstone Gent." And the printer's advertisement at the end of the play is dated August 20,1578. The basic plot of Promos and Cassandra had a wide currency during the Renaissance period, appearing in numerous versions shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century. A number of Shakespearean scholars or historians of literature have compiled lists of these variants; among these lists are those of Dunlop, Douce, Creizenach, and Foth. 1 The best survey of the story is that of Frederick E. Budd in his "Material for the Study of the Sources of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure." 2 Professor Budd includes eight nondramatic and seven dramatic pre-Shakespearean versions, exclusive of many which vary only slightly from other accounts and are listed by him under the main versions from which they seem to be derived. The most highly developed, and for our purposes the most important, accounts of the story are Rouillet's tragedy, Philanira (1556), Cinthio's 3 tale in his Hecatommithi (1565), the same author's tragicomedy Epitia (before 1573), Whetstone's tragicomedy, Promos and Cassandra (1578), the prose tale in his Heptameron of Civill Discourses (1582), and, of course, Measure for Measure. Each version tells of a corrupt magistrate who, having sentenced a prisoner to die, seduces the prisoner's wife or sister through a promise to free him ; instead the magistrate usually delivers to her the head or corpse of the prisoner. An overlord then punishes the magistrate and makes some sort of restitution to the wronged woman. But the stories vary considerably as to place, time, persons, treatment, and details of action. The place, for example, may be "France," Poitiers, Turin, Como, Milan, Zealand, Insubria, Piedmont, Innsbruck, Julio (Hungary), Vienna, or Padua. Probably the story originated in an actual 1 J. C. Dunlop, History of Fiction, edited by H. Wilson (London, 1 9 1 1 ) , II, 198-200; F. Douce, Illustrations of Shakespeare (London, 1807), I, 1 5 2 - 5 6 ; W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas (Halle, 1 8 9 3 - 1 9 0 9 ) , II, 372, 406, 534; K . Foth, fahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-GeseUschaft (Weimar, 1878), pp. 1 7 1 if. 2 Revue de Littérature Comparée, October-December, 1 9 3 1 , pp. 7 1 1 - 3 6 . 3 Giovanni Battista Giraldi, surnamed Cinthio.

54

Promos and Cassandra

event, perhaps independently in more than one locality through similar happenings. In fact, the argument of a French translation of Rouillet's Philanira, a translation probably made by the author himself, begins, Quelques années sont passées depuis qu'une Dame de Piémont . . .* The original Latin version, however, it must be admitted supplies slight indication, if any, of a source in contemporary history; at the same point 5 it reads merely, Mulier in Insubria . . . The date of the crime is usually late in the fifteenth century or within the sixteenth, often not very long before the time of writing—a further suggestion of topical origin. The accounts of Lipsius and of Nathaniel Wanley are said to be based on authentic history. The names of the characters are carefully altered, as was usually the case in Renaissance stories and plays unless the names had some peculiar dramatic value. The name of the magistrate, for example, is Oliver le Dain, Provost la Vouste, "Dux Hispanus," Don Garcias, Severus, Juriste, Promos, Angelo, Franzese, or Charles. His title and position likewise vary; he is most frequently a deputy for an overlord, but he may be a prefect, a captain, a judge, a governor, or a favorite of the king. His character also varies; he may be generally corrupt and villainous, or he may be generally meritorious, even puritanical, except for this one lapse. He seems to evolve toward the latter type, becoming thereby more credible and interesting. In Cinthio's Epitia his mental struggle is dramatized by the use of two minor characters representing the conflicting forces in his own personality: a stern and uncompromising idealist, Podesta, and the liberal and humane secretary. These characters sometimes reappear, though not as clearly defined, in later versions. In some cases the woman is a comparative stranger to her seducer; in others he has been long enamored of her and provokes her kinsman's crime in order to bring the woman within his power. This motivation disappears, however, as the character becomes progressively developed. The unfortunate woman—whose name is Catherine, Aemelia, Philanira, Epitia, Cassandra, Isabella-Marianna, Cintia, or Inesa—is the pris* F. E. Budd, "Rouillet's Philanira and Whetstone's Promot and Cassandra," The Review of English Studies, Vol. VI, No. 21 (January, 1930), p. 34, note 1. 5 Claudii Roilleti Belnensis varia poemata (Paris, 1556), sig. jy.

Promos and Cassandra

55

oner's wife in the earlier stories, but she becomes his sister in the two accounts of Giraldi Cinthio, in the two of Whetstone, and in Measure for Measure. The change seems to be a result of the rising preference during the Renaissance for tragicomedy over tragedy. In order to avoid a gruesome ending, the writer must spare the life of the prisoner and at the same time salvage in some measure the honor of the woman by marrying her to her seducer. These solutions are manifestly incompatible if the woman is the wife of the prisoner. She appears first as the sister in Cinthio's tale,8 but Cinthio strangely allowed the brother to be killed, as had been customary with the husband in earlier versions to provide for the marriage of the woman and the magistrate. Not until he was reworking the story into his play Epitia some years later did it apparently occur to Cinthio that it was now possible also to save the life of the brother. The woman seems also to grow younger as the story evolves. Rouillet makes her the mother of three children and thereby supplies pathetic scenes between the wronged woman and her offspring. Cinthio and Whetstone have her young and charming. Shakespeare divides her into Isabella, the novice just entering a nunnery, and Marianna, the jilted fiancée of the magistrate. Shakespeare is also the first author to marry her to the overlord rather than to the disgraced magistrate. Both of these changes were obviously designed to provide a less unpleasant tragicomic denouement and avoid some of the most unsavory features carried over from the earlier tragic endings. This solution is by no means altogether pleasing; but the objection sometimes raised that it is inconsistent because Angelo's prénuptial transgression is considered of slight importance while that of Claudio brings a death sentence seems unsound. It is Angelo, the precisian and reformer, who condemns Claudio; it is the humane and liberal Duke who pardons Angelo. Shakespeare probably was more tolerant toward the situation represented in the Angelo-Marianna affair than some of us. He had used it formerly in All's Well. Then of course his own Susanna was born unconventionally early after a hurried wedding. His opinion probably resembled the Duke's rather than Angelo's. At any rate, his Isabella is incomparably 8

Hccatommilhi

(Venice, 1580), Part II, Eighth Day, Novella V.

56

Promos and

Cassandra

finer than any of her prcdcccssors, even Epitia—too fine to be prostituted or married willy-nilly to the magistrate who had sought to dishonor her. She must marry the most admirable man in the play. The prisoner and his crime undergo quite as marked variation and evolution. His name is Réné, Raynucio, Hippolytus, Vico, Andrugio, Claudio, Lelio, or Oratio. He is one of a band of robbers guilty of pillaging; he has slain his bosom friend in a fit of jealousy; he is guilty of deliberately provoked insubordination; he is a murderer; he has betrayed a fort to the enemy; the magistrate has falsely accused him of treason; he has oppressed and robbed people under his care; or he has slain a captain sent to conduct his wife to the magistrate. But again Whetstone and Shakespeare followed Giraldi Cinthio, who had found a better way. In both the novel and the play Cinthio's prisoner is guilty of prenuptial transgression with the consent of his intended bride. This crime provides the ironic situation in which the magistrate falls into the very error for which he in his righteous zeal had condemned another man to die. It also makes his fall more plausible by providing a better psychological basis for his temptation. As Angelo himself says, a strumpet would have excited nothing but loathing in the mind of this rather ascetic reformer. H e succumbs only to a tearful virgin, kneeling before him, while she shyly defends her brother's lust and reluctantly deprecates the seriousness of fornication. The scene is sordid and revolting but penetrating in its dramatic revelation of the magistrate's mind, steadfast and unrelenting at first, then wavering and hesitant, and finally debased. The prisoner seems to become more important as the plot evolves. In neither Philanira nor Epitia is he presented on stage at all. In Promos and Cassandra and in Measure for Measure an important scene is that in which the brother attempts to persuade his sister to dishonor herself in order to save his life. T h e brother's actual appearance near the end of the two latter plays is dramatically more effective, too, than is the method used in the two former of imparting through other characters the information that he is still alive. This divergence provides, of course, an example of a significant difference between the classic tradition and the romantic—the romantic writers insisting on actual presentation of action on the stage, rather than through declamatory narrative. The prison scenes of the two English plays seem also to contain a sardonic implied

Promos and Cassandra

57

comment on the discrepancy between ideals and conduct. Shakespeare was more obviously than usual drawing on Promos and Cassandra in this scene; perhaps his chief contribution lies in a more bitter skepticism in representing the reaction of the condemned man. Whetstone shows him at the beginning of the scene begging for his life even at the expense of his sister's honor. In Measure for Measure he flares up angrily when first told of Angelo's indecent proposition and will have none of it. He is all for dying with the family honor intact. He is the same man who imperiled the honor of Juliet, but when his sister's honor is the price of his freedom he does not hesitate to accept death. His reaction is thoroughly conventional, conditioned by everything he has read or heard. But when his anger shortly begins to cool and his conditioning gives way, he speaks what is perhaps in its context the most eloquent line in the play: "Death is a fearful thing." He follows it with the speech beginning, Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; T o lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod . . .

In Promos and Cassandra and in Measure for Measure, the nastiness and dreariness of the story is, however, by no means unrelieved as Professor H. B. Charlton pointed out a few years ago in a speech at the John Rylands Library. 7 And the precariousness of attempting dogmatically to infer an author's mood from the speeches of his characters is obvious. As Professor Charlton says, "There is almost intolerable insistence on meting out reward to the virtuous and punishment to the guilty. And even the punishment is determined in the spirit that it is as much a judge's duty to qualify as to inforce the laws." Professor Charlton quotes Isabella's mercy speech, comparable to Portia's, and sees in Claudio's agonized dread of death a sense of the potential richness of humanity. 8 7 H. B. Charlton, "The Dark Comedies," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Manchester, Vol. XXI, No. 1 (April, 1 9 3 7 ) , pp. 7 8 - 1 2 8 . Though Professor Charlton mentions Cinthio's Epitia among the earlier treatments of the story, he for some reason neglects it in comparing Measure for Measure with its predecessors, giving only the Hecatommithi tale as Cinthio's version of the story. He thereby ascribes to Whetstone changes which probably originated in Epttia. 8 Cf. also Benedetto Croce, Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille, translated by Douglas Ainelic (New York, 1920), p. 264.

58

Promos and Cassandra

He mentions also the fact that Shakespeare spares even the reprobate Barnardine and substitutes for Claudio's supposed head that of a criminal who had died a natural death. Other evidence of the decency and compassion of the English writers is present in both plays. The attitude of the condemned brother in the prison scenes is promptly combated in each play by that of the sister, his cowardice being sharply contrasted with her courage. The function of the overlord in the various accounts remains much the same; he is the incorruptible dispenser of justice, a sort of deus ex machina, who rectifies the injustice of the magistrate, restoring confidence in the ultimate heads of government. Shakespeare has given to this role also a greater importance than any earlier writer chose to give it, allowing the Duke to remain on the scene incognito throughout the play and marrying him finally to Isabella. Relationships and degrees of indebtedness between the different versions are not easy to determine. There seems to be no evidence that Cinthio knew Philanira. Points of resemblance in the works of the two men are explainable by the assumption that they are telling a story which had common currency during the period in which they wrote. Philanira is an unrelieved tragedy in which a wife after sacrificing her honor to save her condemned husband is presented with his dead body. She then marries her seducer, who is immediately put to death. Bereft of both her husbands, she is about to commit suicide when the final curtain falls. In Cinthio's Hecatommithi a virgin secures a promise of pardon for her brother by spending a night with the magistrate. After her brother is beheaded, the emperor compels the magistrate to marry her and pardons him at her request. The couple then live happily together. In Epitia the brother's life is saved by a kindly Captain of Justice who does not carry out the death sentence. Otherwise the plot of Cinthio's two versions is substantially the same. Philanira, though it smacks of the classic rules when compared with a romantic English play, really observes them much less accurately than Epitia does. The action in Epitia, for example, in order to observe the unity of time does not begin until after the seduction of the heroine. It is to be remembered that Philanira antedates the formulation of the unities of time and place in France by Jean de la Taille in 1572; Epitia was probably written at about

Promos and Cassandra

59

the time (1570) that Castelvetro was performing that service in Italy. Whetstone's principal source of the main plot in Promos and Cassandra was Cinthio's novel, but occasional details of phraseology and action not present in the novel are apparently supplied from Philanira.9 A play by this title, doubtless Rouillet's, was acted at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1564/5. 10 It is possible that George Whetstone saw this play. His brother, Bernard Whetstone, matriculated fellow commoner (the first of the three ranks) from St. Johns, Cambridge, at Easter, 1563.» Whetstone does not seem, however, to have known Epitia, Cinthio's dramatic version of the story. It has been usually assumed that he did not, because Epitia was not published until 1583, five years after the publication of Promos and Cassandra. Epitia was, however, published posthumously by the author's son Celso and was written prior to 1573, the date of Cinthio's death. There remains, therefore, the possibility that Whetstone, who had probably traveled on the Continent, had seen it in manuscript. Many blunders have been made by scholars who have discussed Epitia without reading it, assuming that it would be faithful dramatization of Cinthio's shorter and more accessible novel. Cinthio also contributed to the confusion by supplying the play with an "argument" which follows the novel more closely than the play actually does. He perhaps made changes in the play after writing the argument or, more likely, chose not to destroy the suspense, as dramatic critics too often do, by revealing prematurely the surprise elements of the plot. The revelation that the brother has not been put to death comes as a complete surprise at the end of the play. Complete surprise of this kind is so unusual in plays that a reader naturally turns back at the end to search for some veiled preparatory intimation or foreshadowing of the event. In Epitia none is discoverable. This unexpected denouement has proved to be another trap for unwary critics who neglect to read entire works. Doctor Louis Albrecht, however, after what was evidently a careful 9

F. E. Budd, "Rouillet's Philanira and Whetstone's Promos and Cassandra," The Review of English Studies, Vol. VI, No. 21 (January, 1930), pp. 3 1 - 4 8 . 10 F. S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1 9 1 4 ) , pp. 2 1 , 109. 11 Alumni Cantahrigienses, compiled by John Venn and J. A. Venn (Cambridge, 1927), IV, 392.

6o

Promos and Cassandra

examination of Epitia, concluded in 1914 that Whetstone was familiar w i t h this play in manuscript. 1 2 H e supported his opinion by citing three principal features c o m m o n to the t w o plays but not present in Cinthio's novel: ( 1 ) T h e ending of each is ostensibly entirely happy, the life of the brother being preserved by the jailer. ( 2 ) Songs in Promos and

Cassandra

arc interspersed freely at the beginning, middle, or end of a scene, just as choruses were in Epitia, a chorus of L a m i a ' s companions correspondi n g to a chorus of Epitia's ladies in w a i t i n g . A n d (3) a pious Christian tone is present in both. O n l y the first of these resemblances appears to be of much importance. In fact, Albrecht justly admits that the third considered alone w o u l d carry little weight. Songs were extensively used by most of the playwrights of Whetstone's day, and those w h i c h he uses in no wise resemble in purpose, manner, or content the pseudoclassical choruses of the Italian play. T h e piety of Promos

and Cassandra,

likewise, is by no means a

unique feature. Quite as m u c h piety is likely to appear in certain poems of Whetstone's Roc^e of Regard, published two years earlier, or for that matter in almost anything else written by him or his contemporaries. Neither is this Christian piety as completely replaced by ancient pagan ideas in Cinthio's novel, Whetstone's conventionally accepted source, as Albrecht seems to have inferred. T h e b e g i n n i n g of the novel, as the listeners discuss the preceding story and prepare the way for our story, contains as m u c h piety as the most devout could wish. 1 3 But the fact remains that the life of the brother is preserved in Epitia alone of the extant versions w h i c h antedate Promos and Cassandra. T h i s change, nevertheless, is only one of a considerable number, most of them obvious improvements, w h i c h C i n t h i o effected in dramatizing his novel. W h y did Whetstone adopt none of the others? Characters—such as Podesta, Secretary, A n g e l a , and I r e n e — w h o contributed important motivation and credibility to the actions of the chief characters in Epitia are absent f r o m the dramatis personae of Promos and Cassandra. A s B u d d states, there are a number of "exclusive parallels" in Measure for

Measure

and Epitia, but they are not present in Promos and Cassandra. Similarly, where superior details of argument, reasoning, or contemplated action 12 Netie Untersuchungen zu Shakespeares Mast jiir Mass (Berlin, 1914), pp. 112-24. J 3 Cinthio, Hecatqmmithi, Part II, Eighth Day, Novella V , p. i j o r .

Promos and Cassandra

6i

are advanced by characters in Epitia, Whetstone continues to use those present in the novel or to devise others entirely independent and in many cases less convincing or effective. An examination of corresponding passages in the plays of Shakespeare and Whetstone reveals, usually, marked similarities until a definite purpose makes divergence advisable. 14 Shakespeare does not use Whetstone's words, but he freely appropriates ideas. Whetstone, had he known Epitia, would doubtless have used it in much the same way. With one exception—the brother's escape —all the material common to the two plays seems to be present also in the novel of the Hecatommithi, which was published in 1565 and was undoubtedly known to Whetstone. Andrugio, the condemned brother in Promos and Cassandra, is a prominent character appearing frequently on the scene; Vico (Ludovico), Epitia's brother, never appears. The reader is not informed of his whereabouts after the time of his supposed death. Andrugio is allowed to redeem himself somewhat for his fornication and his willingness to sacrifice his sister's honor. Realizing near the end of the play that Promos is necessary to his sister's happiness, he confesses his identity to save the life of Promos, although he strongly fears that this act will cost him his own life. The analogy, therefore, lies only in the fact that the life of the brother in both plays is preserved—by a "Captain of Justice" in Epitia, by the "Gayler" in Promos and Cassandra. A body dressed in Vico's clothes with the severed head at its feet is sent to Epitia, only a head to Cassandra. On superficial examination even this resemblance seems too close to be the result of pure coincidence; the life of the prisoner might be preserved in any number of other ways. But it is difficult to contrive a way which will not necessitate numerous rearrangements to avoid weakening the plot. For example, an escape arranged by the sister or by the betrothed would weaken the plot appreciably. The deputy would no longer be held guilty of the death of the brother, and a great part of the motive of the overlord in pardoning the deputy would be removed. Also, when the sister consents to sacrifice her chastity, it must be understood that there is no other means of saving the life of her brother. Any substitute solution is likely to destroy the dramatic effec14 Robert H. Wilson, "The Mariana Plot of Measure for Measure," Philological terly, Vol. IX, No. 4 (October, 1930), pp. 3 4 1 - 5 0 .

Quar-

62

Promos and Cassandra

tiveness of the last act. A much simpler and more efficient change is that of substituting the mangled head of another prisoner already dead for the head and body of the actual brother. Such a substitution is by no means novel, as Simrock, Albrecht, and Lawrence 1 5 have agreed. The exhibition of the head is an old folk-tale device; a servant is employed to do a murder and deceives his master by producing false proofs. It is noteworthy in this connection that the progressive alterations and additions by Whetstone and Shakespeare consist mainly of the insertion of story elements common to folk tales, ballads, and the more popular of the medieval romances: Andrugio disguised as a "ghostly father" in hermit's garb accompanies Promos; a yokel who receives brusque and arbitrary treatment at the hands of haughty subordinates finds King Corvinus and his nobles generous and democratic; a discarded wife or fiancée is substituted in bed for a mistress; a ruler in disguise circulates among his subjects. The list could be extended at some length. Such incidents are common in the folk literature of all nations and are as likely to be told of Alfred the Great as of Haroun al Raschid. It is therefore by no means incredible that two writers entirely independent of each other should hit on the same alteration. There have been differences of opinion as to the number of sources known to Shakespeare in the preparation of Measure for Measure. These differences were doubtless due in large part to varying degrees of familiarity with the various versions of the story. Albrecht 1 6 compiled in 1914 a kind of poll on the question by examining introductions, histories, and the like. He found that : 23 15 5 2 1

critics cited Whetstone's drama and novel Whetstone's drama alone Whetstone's drama and novel and Cinthio's novel Whetstone's drama and novel and Cinthio's drama Whetstone's drama and novel and Cinthio's drama and novel

15 Karl Simrock, Die Qucllen des Shakespeare in Novellen, Marchen, und Sagen (Bonn, 1872), Part I, p. 154, and in the partial translation, The Remarks oj M. Karl Simrock. on the Plots of Shakespeare's Plays, with notes and additions by J. O. Halliwell (Shakespeare Society, London, 1850), p. 38; Louis Albrecht, Neue V ntersuchungen zu Shakespeares Mass jiir Mass (Berlin, 1 9 1 4 ) , p. 1 2 7 ; William Witherle Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931 ), pp. 94 and 144, note 27. 16 Op. cit., pp. 1 0 - 3 1 .

Promos and Cassandra

63

T h e y are in agreement on one point: all forty-six accept Promos

and

Cassandra as a source. B u d d in 1931 suggested that Shakespeare in addition to Promos and Cassandra "had read possibly L u p t o n ' s story, probably the novels of Giraldi and Whetstone, and almost certainly Giraldi's Epitia."

Budd cites five slight resemblances between Measure

1T

for

Measure and Lupton's story, but the evidence, as he says, is inconclusive. Whetstone presumably did not k n o w this version since it was first published in Sivquila,

in 1580, t w o years after Promos

and

Cassandra.

T h o u g h thirty-one of the critics listed in Albrecht's poll cited W h e t stone's novel as a source of Measure for Measure,

the evidence is usually

not thoroughly convincing. It is often said that the name Isabella w a s possibly suggested to Shakespeare by the fact that the narrator of the story in Whetstone's Heptameron

bore that name. It is also pointed out

that the D u k e disguises himself, as the brother, A n d r u g i o , had done in Promos and Cassandra. B u d d adds

18

the observation that the disguise in

Promos and Cassandra is merely "some long black C l o a k e , " while in the Heptameron

it is "the habyt of an h e r m y t . " It m i g h t be added also that

the name L o d o w i c k assumed by the F r i a r - D u k e further suggests the brother. In both of Cinthio's versions the brother is called V i c o , erroneously printed Vieo by W . C . H a z l i t t and others. Vico is a diminutive of Ludovic.

T h e r e is, however, a more significant resemblance to W h e t -

stone's novel in the prison scene (III, i) w h e n Isabella reports to her brother the terms under w h i c h she can secure his pardon. In

Promos

and Cassandra the brother, after expressing surprise, immediately concludes: Syster, that wise men love, we often see, And where love rules, gainst thornes dost reason spurne. But whoso loves, if he reiected be, His passing love, to peevish hate will turne. Deare sister then, note how my fortune stands, That Promos love, the like is oft in use: And sith he craue, this kindnesse at your handes, Thinke this, if you his pleasure do refuse. I in his rage (poore wretch) shall sing peccaui. 17

F. E . Budd, "Material for the S t u d y of the Sources of Shakespeare's Measure

Measure," 1

Reçue

de Littérature

»/& 1 5 ° : Thomas Wilson's dicta on, text, 255-58 Orlando Furioso. 106 Orphic hymns, 96 "Ortchard of Repentance, The" (fourth part of The Rocke of Regard), 9, 35, 36, 44-47

Osborne, Sir Edward, 1 3 2 , 134 Ovid, 91 f., 106, 250 Owst, Gerald Robert, 145 Painter, William, The Palace of Pleasure, 38, 42, 85, 86, 87, 90, 98 Palingenius, Marcellus, 243, 244 Panoptic of Devices, A, 134, 286 Parodyse 0/ Dainty Deuises, The, I, 15, 50 f., 229, 280, 281 Pardoner's Tale, The (Chaucer), 144 Park, Thomas, 127; quoted, 133 Pater, Walter, quoted, 128 Patriotism, Whetstone's, 177, 214, 225, 2 4 1 ; professional, of writers, 241 Paul the Deacon, 85 Pembroke, Countess of, 126 Perez, Antonio, 2 1 2 Petrarch, 106 f. Philanira (Rouillet), 53-59 passim, 73 Phillipps, W. F. March, 225 Plato, h i , 1 1 2 , 1 1 3 , 1 1 5 , 122, 157 Platonic love, 1 1 4 "Pleasant Fable of Ferdinando Jeronimi . . ." (Gascoigne), 38 Pliny, 92, 94; quoted, 93 Plutarch, Lives, 104, 174, 265, 267, 270 (excerpt, 1 5 9 ) ; Moralia, 90, 93, n o , 1 7 2 , 189, 193, 265; Morals, Goodwin edition, 266, 270 Poetry, use of songs by playwrights, 60, 78; use of prose and verse in plays, 78; of old and new forms together, 79; verse translations difficult to trace, 107; style used in the elegies, 229, 241, 251 Posies, The (Gascoigne), 16, 36, 227, 228, 279 Printemps (Yver), 1 1 9 Promos and Cassandra, 1, 3, 42, 48, 52-79, 87, 1 3 1 , 146; much of Measure for Measure plot quarried from, 1 , 3, 52, 62, 64; dedication, excerpts, 16, 52, 7 1 , 75; included in An Heptameron of Civill Discourses, 52, 53, 63, 64; rejected for stage:

converted into prose, 52; basic plot, 53; variants of the story and characters used by other writers, 53; relationships and degrees of indebtedness between the different versions, 58; comparison of Measure for Measure with, 64-70; speculations as to revisions, 68; and possibility of an intermediate play, 70; reasons for failure of, 72; length: division into parts, 75; tide page, text, 76; verse and prose in, 78; Walter Pater on, 128; bibiliography, 281, 283 Protestantism, ardor for, 177, 186, 225; dangers real and threatening, 225 Proverbs and quotations, use of, 207, 209 f. Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 69 Quotation of proverbs and maxims, 207, 209 f. Radcliffe, Thomas, Earl of Sussex, elegy on, 25, 242-44, 283 Raleigh, Carew, 17, 21 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 17, 2 1 , 940; quoted, 114 Read, Conyers, 220 Realism, 7 1 , 259 Recreations of His Age, The (Bacon), 233 Reformed rake, fashionable pose, 36 Reforms, reasons for writers' interest in, 37; Whetstone's interest, 37, 65; reasons for failure to accomplish, 1 4 3 ; responsibility for stream of reform literature, 144; see also Government Religion, Whetstone's Protestantism, 1 7 7 , 186, 225; dangers real and threatening, 225; literature influenced by shifting theological concepts, 238 Remembraunce of the . . . Life and Godly End of George Gascoigne, Esquire, A, 227-31, 280 Remembraunce of the . . . Life of . . . Sir Nicholas Bacon, Knight, A, 22, 2 3 1 39. 282 Remembraunce of the Precious Vertues of . . . Sir James Dier, Knight, A, 239-42, 283 Remembraunce of . . . Thomas [Radcliffe] Late Earle of Sussex, A, 242-44, 283 Rhetoric, interest in, 120; Thomas Wilson's dicta on, text, 150, 255-58

Index Rich, Barnabe, quoted, 126 Riddles and games, 1 1 9 , 1 2 1 Rime royal, 241, 251 Robertson, J. M., 70 Robinson, Richard, 1 1 Roc^e of Regard, The, 8, 1 0 - 1 3 , '> 32> 3 5 - 5 1 , 60, 1 4 1 , 164, 228, 246, 251, 259; dedications, 9, 41-44; supposedly autobiographical material in, 1 0 - 1 3 , 44> 47> 162, 163; friends who contributed verse to, 15; prefaces, 36, 37; names and nature of the four parts, 35; their outlines and subject matter, 37-49; elegies in, 46; appraisal of, 48; made up chiefly of light verse and romantic story, 1 3 1 ; bibliography, 279 Rolfe, John C., 103 Rollins, Hyder Edward, 50, 51 Rouillet, Philanira, 53-59 passim, 73 Russell, Lady Anne, 245, 247, 251 Russell, Edward, Earl of Bedford, 42, 245 Russell, Lady Elizabeth, 43, 164, 246, 251 Russell, Francis, Earl of Bedford, 42, 228; elegy on son and, 25, 164, 244-51, 285; authorities quoted on character and leadership of, 246 f. Russell, Lord John, 43, 246 Russell, Sir William, 164, 246, 251

Saintsbury, George, quoted, 68 f. Schelling, Felix E., quoted, 227 Scott, Mary Augusta, 87, 128 Scriptores historiae Augustae, 145 Sensual experience, passion of writers for describing, 37 Seven deadly sins, 235 f. Severus, Emperor, 143 Shakespeare, indebtedness to Promos and Cassandra for main outlines of his Measure for Measure plot, 1, 3, 48, 52-74 passim; readings and sources, 48, 62, 242; measure of Whetstone's influence on, 68, 2 1 4 ; references to King Cophetua, 109 Shepard, Odell, quoted, 89 Sidney, Sir Philip, 30, 77, 1 2 1 , 126, 164, 203; elegy on, 2, 1 1 , 28, 3 1 , 230, 244, 251-55, 287; death: funeral, 28; quoted, 78; at battle of Zutphen, 252-55; soldierly qualities, 253 Silva de varia leccion (Mexia), 98, 183 Sin, nature of, 235-37

295

Singer, Charles, information about Whetstone, 2-4 Smith, G. Gregory, quoted, 141 Smith, Sir Thomas, 206, 2 1 0 Social intercourse, efforts to refine and improve, 80, 81, 1 1 4 - 1 7 Social unrest, failure to touch underlying causes, 143; responsible for stream of reform literature, 144 Soldiers, book on moral conduct of, 162; see The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier Songs, use by playwrights, 60, 78 Sonnet form, rare use of, 230 Spenser, Edmund, 2 4 1 ; quoted, 245, 247 Stage, attitude toward, 2, 7 1 , 78, 142; function and nature of ideal comedy, 7 1 ; the anti-stage controversy, 141-43 Stauffer, Donald A., quoted, 258 Steele, Sir Dick, 168 Steevens, George, 31 Stubbs, John, 123 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 86 Symbols, heraldic, 1 2 1 , 134 Symposium (Plato), 1 1 3 , 1 1 5

Tamburlaine (Marlowe), sources, 2 1 5 f. Taller, The, 2 1 7 Taverns, evils of, 136-40, 144 Taylor, E. G. R., 20; quoted, 21 Taylor, Thomas, 96 Teager, Florence E., 232 Theater, see Stage Theme, method of developing and enforcing, 1 5 1 Thompson, Gladys Scott, 246 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 239 Tilney, Edmund, 1 1 8 Titchbourne, Chidiock, 225 Touchstone for the Time, A, 2, 1 1 , 47, 179, 1 8 1 , 182; one of The English Myrror group, written in behalf of government and religion, 26, 177, 195, 225; published, bound, and paged with A Mirour for Magistrates of Cyties (q.v.), 131 fT.; title page, text: dedication, 132; rarely mentioned except as an anti-stage publication, 1 4 1 ; bibliography, 284 Translating, Whetstone addicted to, 185 Translations, 39 Trench, W. F., 143

296

Index

True Discourse Historical!, A, 11 Turbervile, George, 86 Udall, E d m u n d , 255; duel with Whetstone, 29; military reputation, 31 Underhill, Edward, 248-50 Underhill, John Garrett, 126 Unicorn-rhinoceros myth, 89 Usury, 140 Verdier, Antoine du, Les Diverses Leçons as source material, for A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties, 154-57; for The English Myrror, 184-95 passim, 200, 208, 209, 267-75; for An Heptameron of Cit'ill Discourses, 263-65; for The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier, 267; hybrid copy: growth in successive editions, 275 Verse, see Poetry "Verses Written of 20. Good Precepts . . . ," 50, 2 8 1

Virgil, 89, 90, 109, 204 Wallace, Malcolm William, quoted, 254 Wal raven, Jacob, 164 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 30, 220 War, attitude toward, 162, 168; present significance of remarks on, 176 Ward, B. M., 232; quoted, 231 Warwick, Ambrose, Earl of, 251, 252 Watson, Thomas, 128 Webbe, William, quoted, 32 Whetstone ancestors, 10 Whetstone, Anne (Mrs. George), 25, 44, 178»»

Whetstone, Bernard, 2, 6, 7, 10, 30, 59, 164, 228; with Sidney at battle of Zutphen, 28, 251; granted an augmentation to his coat of arms, 163 Whetstone, Francis, 5, 7, 8, 10, 32 Whetstone, George, sources of information about, 1 ff.; Shakespeare's indebtedness to, for Measure for Measure plot, I, 3, 52-74 passim; military service, 2, 10, 11, 28, 162; death, 2, 3, 4, 28, 29 f., 253; last published work, 2; attitude toward the stage, 2, 71, 78, 142; spellings of name, 3, 10; a ship's officer? 4; age, 4; frequent appearance of name in books: important in his time, 5; property left 5» 7; brothers of, 5; date of birth, 6,

7; where youth was spent: first published work, 8; supposedly autobiographical material in The Roc^e of Regard, 10-13, 44. 47> 162» ' 6 3 ; desire for patronage and preferment, 10, 240; evidendy a student at Inns of Court, 1315, 205; early friendships, 15, 45 f., 50; read French easily, 15»; with Sir H u m phrey Gilbert's expedition, 16-21; Italy journey and its literary results, 22-24; wife, 25, 44, 178«; legal difficulties, 26; duel with Udall, 29 f., 255; praise by Digges the nearest approach to an elegy for, 29; usually quoted comments on, 32-34; misinformation about, in the Steevens-Berkcnhout sketch, 32; pose as a reformed rake, 36; interest in reform and in government, 37, 65, 134 ff., 143, 180, 225; serious subjects, preoccupied with, 48; his only play, 52; measure of his influence on Shakespeare, 68, 214; realism, 71, 260; dissatisfied with discrepancy between his play and his lofty conception of an ideal comedy, 7 1 ; a pioneer in dramatic criticism, 75, 77 f.; indications as to scope of his reading, 90, 104, 185, 203; method in use of his sources, 96, 119, 153, 158, 168, 196, 207; plan, attitude, and method show indebtedness to Castiglione, 97; wealth of allusions which reflect the Elizabethan world, 119, 161, 2 1 3 f., 234; contemporary preoccupations reflected by, 119 ff.; how conventional and how original he was, 119, 174; beginning of a new period in his writing, 131, 134; curious notice of his list of works, 133; efforts to accomplish reforms in London, 134 ff.; why he and others failed to accomplish reforms, 143; influence of oration form upon, 150; method of developing and enforcing a theme, 1 5 1 ; recondite allusions collected from a single encyclopedia, 156, 157, 158; never used Greek, ' 5 7 . 185; use of English sources difficult to trace, 160; contradicts own statements about military experience, 162, 163; singularly humane and enlightened attitude toward war and the soldier, 168; present-day significance of remarks on war, 176; Protestantism, 177, 186, 225; patriotism, 177, 214, 225, 241; in dis-

index claiming originality frees himself from suspicion of plagiarism, 182; addicted to translating: not excessively learned, 1 8 ; ; identification of sources difficult because he merely summarizes or alludes, 196; use of biblical references, 200; quotations suggesting legal training, 205-7; method in use of proverbs and quotations, 207-9; warning to Queen against poisoning by physician, 2 1 1 ; as ancestor of later writers, 2 1 7 , 2 1 8 ; lofty ideals, 218, 259; the one book addressed to middle and lower classes, 222; books of value in solidifying public opinion and determining future of England, 226; appointment as commissioner of musters, 226; most frequently reprinted work, 227; motives for commemorating deaths of celebrities, 239, 241, 245; method used in writing elegies, 255; end of a period in history with which end of his life coincides, 258; a product of his age, 259; prose style appraised, 259 f.; bibliography of his seventeen works, with notes on later editions and rcprintings, 279-87 Whetstone, John, 5, 7 Whetstone, Margaret Bernard, 7

Whetstone, Robert, Sr., 10; property and will, 5, 6, 27 Whetstone, Robert, Jr., 6, 26 William of Orange, 124, 195, 196, 199 Wilson, John Dover, 69, 142 Wilson, Robert H., 6 1 ; quoted, 64, 70 Wilson, Thomas, 120, 189; on orations and rhetoric, text, 150, 255-58; on amplification, 152 Wingfield, Robert, 9, 46 Wood, Anthony, 8, 230 Wotton, Henry, 1 1 9 Writers, literary success a road to preferment at court: reasons for interest in reforms, 37; passion for describing sexual experience, 37; and the perplexities of love, 40; preoccupation with envy, death, and similar abstractions, 48; with rhetorical form, 120, 255; stream of reform literature, 144; interest in oration form, 150; professional patriots, 241; see also Literature; Poetry Wytton, John, 15; quoted, 33 Yver, Jacques, 1 1 9 Zodiacui vitae (Palingenius), 244 Zutphen, battle of, 2, 251