George Whetstone is remembered primarily for Promos and Cassandra (1578), his only play and a chief source for William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (1604). But to contemporaries he was better known as an elegist, moralist, and patriotic writer. Whetstone's elegies give him a good claim to the title of first professional biographer in English. His moralistic writings, with their emphasis on the corruptions of the London underworld, offer modern readers a glimpse into the seedier side of Elizabethan England. In his prose, an increasingly explicit patriotism reflects his belief that a reformed and firmly Protestant England could be a first-rate power and role model to the world. While often undistinguished, Whetstone's literary output is deeply characteristic of his era, and his wide range of work illustrates the variety of options available to the professional writer in the 1570s and 1580s.

Whetstone was born in London in 1550. His father, Robert, a...