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George Whetstone - life and works
Whetstone’s life was typical of a Gentleman of his time. He participated in military expedition and in one he was killed, perhaps in 1587.
He was the third son of Robert Whetstone a rich Gentleman of London. It may be he was a member of a “Inns of Court”. We have some article in this sense.
There are not many biographical notes about Whetstone. We know he was born about 1554 and he died about 1587. T.C. Izard says he was christened in 1550 at St. Lawrence in the Old Jewry. He was a polygraph. His literary activity includes poetry, plays, prose narrative, songs, political works, fiction, epigrams in dedication to dead friends. We can remember the Elegy to Sir Ph. Sidney
and The Elegy in Remembrance of Sir Gaskoigne.
These biographical works made him the first biographer in Elizabethan time. He was man of his times. He participated in many military expeditions and in the last he was killed by a certain Uvedall, Servant of Sir Ph. Sidney. (Mark Eccles gives us these news from an article of his).
Whetstone’s works had a particular evolution: from fiction and poetry to realism, politics, and prose.
The first book we can consider is The Rocke of the Regard
(1576) which is a fiction work where poetry alternates with prose. It’s a light work with a final allegorical dream and romantic tales.
Promos and Cassandra is a play, written for the stage, which deals with problems regarding dramaturgy. In the Dedicatory Epistles of Promos and Cassandra he writes about his idea of a comedy.
An Heptameron of Civill Discourses (1582) is a way to introduce Italian social customs in England, settling the scene at an Italian Renaissance Court. Prose tales, poems and Dialogue form is its material. It has a particular structure: Dialogue form and Framed Novellas.
A Mirror for Magistrates of the Cities and A Touchstone for the Time (1584) mark e new phase of his literary work. He began to write didactic books; he writes of politics as a patriot and Puritan. The last Book by Whetstone, entitled The English Myrror (1586) was dedicated to Elizabeth I.
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