George Whetstone (1544?-1587?) was an English dramatist and author. Events April 11 - Battle of Ceresole - French forces under the Comte dEnghien defeat Imperial forces under the Marques Del Vasto near Turin. ... Events February 8 - Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle in England after she is implicated in a plot to murder her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. July 22 - Colony of Roanoke: A group of English settlers arrive on Roanoke Island off of North Carolina to re-establish the... Royal motto: Dieu et mon droit (French: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area  - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 1st UK 49,138,831 377/km² Ethnicity... A dramatist is an author of dramatic compositions, usually plays. ... The word author has several meanings: The author of a book, story, article or the like, is the person who has written it (or is writing it). ...

He was the third son of Robert Whetstone (d. 1557), a member of a wealthy family that owned the manor of Walcot at Bernack, near Stamford in Lincolnshire. George appears to have had a small inheritance which he soon spent, and he complains bitterly of the failure of a lawsuit to recover a further inheritance of which he had been unjustly deprived. In 1572 he joined an English regiment on active service in the Low Countries, where he met George Gascoigne and Thomas Churchyard. Gascoigne was his guest near Stamford when he died in 1577, and Whetstone commemorated his friend in a long elegy. Stamford is a town on the River Welland in Lincolnshire, England. ... Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs) is a county in the East Midlands of England, traditionally the second largest after Yorkshire. ... The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries (see Country) on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. ... George Gascoigne (c. ... Thomas Churchyard (c. ... Originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), the term elegy is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. ...

His first published work, the Rocke of Regards (1576), consisted of tales in prose and verse adapted from the Italian, and in 1578 he published The right, excellent and famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra, a play in two parts, drawn from the eighty-fifth novel of Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatomithi. To this he wrote an interesting preface addressed to William Fleetwood, recorder of London, to whom he claimed to be related, in which he criticizes contemporary drama. Giovanni Battista Giraldi (November, 1504 - December 30, 1573), surnamed Cynthitus, Cinthio or Cintio, was an Italian novelist and poet. ... William Fleetwood (January 1, 1656 - August 4, 1723) English preacher and Bishop of Ely remembered by economists and statisticians for constructing a price index in 1707. ... St. ...

In 1582 he published his Heptameron of Civil Discourses, a collection of tales which includes The Rare Historie of Promos and Cassandra. From this prose version William Shakespeare apparently drew the plot of Measure for Measure, though he was probably familiar with the story in its earlier dramatic form. (The Avon Swan probably used another Whetstone's book for his Much Ado About Nothing.) Whetstone accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert on his expedition in 1578-1579, and the next year found him in Italy. Events January 15 - Russia cedes Livonia and Estonia to Poland February 24 - Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Measure for Measure is a play written by William Shakespeare in 1604 or 1605. ... Much Ado About Nothing is a play by William Shakespeare. ... Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. ...

The Puritan spirit was now widespread in England, and Whetstone followed its dictates in his prose tract A Mirour for Magestrates (1584), which in a second edition was called A Touchstone for the Time. Rather than abusing the stage as some Puritan writers did, he merely objected to the performance of plays on Sundays. The Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. ... Sunday is considered either the first or the seventh day of the week, between Saturday and Monday, and the second day of the weekend in some cultures. ...

In 1585 he returned to the army in Holland, and was present at the Battle of Zutphen. His other works are a collection of military anecdotes entitled The Honourable Reputation of a Souldier (1585); a political tract, the English Myrror (1586), numerous elegies on distinguished persons, and The Censure of a Loyall Subject (1587). No information about Whetstone is available after the publication of this last book, and it is conjectured that he died shortly afterwards. Events January 12 - The Netherlands adopts the Gregorian calendar Beginning of the Eighth War of Religion in France (also known as the War of the Three Henrys) August 8 - John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in quest for the North West Passage. ... Holland is the name of a region in the central-western part of the Netherlands. ...

Reference

• This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.