vertuous Behaviours of a chaste LADYE; | The uncontrouled Lewdeness of a favoured CURTISAN: | And the undeserved estimation of a pernicious Parasyte.

In the second part is discoursed, The perfect magnanimity of a noble KING, | In checking Vice and favouring Vertue: | Wherein is shown | The Ruin and overthrow of dishonest practises: | With the advancement of upright dealings. The Work of George Whetstone, Gent.'

The Dedication, addressed to his kinsman, the Recorder of London, is one of the earliest Elizabethan manifestoes of dramatic principles we possess. He takes the whole contemporary drama, at home and abroad, vigorously to task. The Italian, French, and Spanish playwrights are too lascivious; the German 'too holy'; the English 'most vain, indiscreet, and out of order,' ignoring the limits of place and time, bringing 'Gods from Heaven and Devils from Hell,' and confusing the distinctions of character. 'Many times (to make mirth) they make a clown companion with a king; in their grave counsels they allow the advice of fools: yea, they use one order of speech for all persons.' In all these points Whetstone's 'work,' as he, like Jonson, characteristically called his play, for it was evidently the fruit of immense pains, exhibited an advance. The story, drawn from Cinthio's Hecatommithi (Dec. viii. Nov. 5) had the best characteristic of the Italian novel: a single, powerful motive, worked out within narrow limits of place and time, and without any resort to marvel.1

1 Cinthio's novel seems to have been founded upon an actual Occurrence of I547, narrated in a letter from a Hungarian student in Vienna, Joseph Macarius, to a friend in Sárvár. Here the heroine undergoes dis

On the other hand, the

honour in order to save her condemned husband, whose execution nevertheless proceeds. She appeals to the imperial governor of the province of Milan, who causes the judge to marry her, pay her 3000 ducats,

characters were mere types, and the plot was handled with somewhat obtuse moral instinct. Whetstone made little advance in individuality of character; but his types 'the lewd Magistrate,' 'the chaste lady,' and the rest—are drawn with much rude vigour. Corvinus, king of Hungary, appoints Promos his deputy in the city of Julia, with a special charge 'to scoorge the wights, good Lawes that disobay.' Promos proceeds to revive the law against incontinence, upon which Andrugio (Claudio) is imprisoned. Andrugio appeals to his sister, Cassandra, who appeals to Promos to be merciful. The language of the scene is sufficiently rude, and in dramatic grip and nexus it breaks down altogether; but the germs of several Shakespearean motives are already discernible :

[She, kneeling, speaks to Promos. Most mighty lord, and worthy judge, thy judgement sharp abate, Vail thou thine ears to hear the plaint that wretched I relate, Behold the woeful sister here of poor Andrugio, Whom though that law awardeth death, yet mercy do him show : Weigh his young years, the force of love, which forced his amiss, Weigh, weigh that marriage works amends for what committed is. He hath defiled no nuptial bed, nor forced rape hath moved; He fell thro' love, who never meant but wive the wight he loved.

Prom. Cassandra, leave off thy bootless suit, by law he hath been tried,

Law found his fault, law judged him death.

Cass.

and lose his head (translated in Notes and Queries, 29th July 1893). This is probably the original of the story found in Goulart, Histoires admirables et mémorables advenues de Nostre Temps, 1607. Successive narrators softened one by one its tragic features. Cinthio saves the tyrannous judge from execution at the intercession of the

Yet this may be replied,

lady; Whetstone similarly saves her condemned brother; Shakespeare finally saves the lady herself from dishonour. A more recent but not very convincing attempt has been made by Sarrazin to show that Shakespeare's duke, Vincentio, was modelled upon the contemporary duke of Mantua, Vincenzio Gonzaga (Jahrbuch, xxxi. 165).

That lawe a mischiefe oft permits, to keep due form of law, That lawe small faults, with greatest dooms, to keep men still

in awe.

Yet kings, or such as execute regal authoritie,

If mends be made may overrule the force of lawe with mercie. Here is no wylful murder wrought, which axeth blood againe ; Andrugio's fault may valued be, Marriage wipes out his stayne.

Promos temporises, then, at a second interview, declares the price of Andrugio's pardon. Cassandra

proceeds to inform her brother, who faces the alternatives like a practical man :

Here are two evils, the best hard to digest,
But where as things are driven unto necessity,
There are we byd, of both evils choose the least.

Cass. And of these evils, the least I hold is death.

But Andrugio urges the slander that she would incur by causing his death; and moreover that Promos, having once experienced her love, 'no doubt but he to marriage will agree.' At this rather unfortunately chosen moment Cassandra suddenly discovers that her honour is of less account than her brother's life:

And shall I stick to stoupe to Promos' will
Since my brother enjoyeth life thereby?

My Andrugio, take comfort in distresse,

Cassandra is wonne, thy raunsom great to paye,
Such care she hath, thy thraldom to release,
As she consentes her honor for to slay.

The 'ransom' is paid, but no reprieve arrives. This, however, is of little moment, for Andrugio's gaoler, a man of sensitive conscience, has released him, sending to Promos the head of one recently executed instead of his. Cassandra seeks the king, tells her story, and, having told it, draws a knife to end her dishonour in the manner of Lucrece. At the king's entreaty she foregoes this resolve, and he prepares to call his deputy to account. The second part opens with his approach. Promos appears before him and is

promptly condemned to lose his head, after having first married Cassandra. But no sooner is the marriage ceremony over than Cassandra exchanges the role of the wronged maiden for that of the devoted wife, and implores his pardon. But the king is inflexible, and Promos is already at the scaffold when the timely arrival of Andrugio enables the king to remit the penalty for his wife's sake.'

To the reader of Measure for Measure all this seems intolerable bungling. Whetstone himself evidently regarded his play with complacency, for he reproduced the story, in Euphuistic prose, four years later in his Heptameron. There he made an attempt to strengthen the action at what was evidently its weakest point, the character of Cassandra. But the task was far beyond his powers. He feels that the compliance of his chaste lady' with Promos' terms requires defence, but cannot decide whether to excuse it as a compulsory sin or to glorify it as a noble sacrifice. She is by turns Lucretia and Alcestis:

If this offence be known (quoth Andrugio) thy fame will bee enlarged, because it will likewise be known that thou receivedst dishonor to give thy brother life: if it be secret, thy conscience will be without scruple of guiltiness. Thus, known or unknown, thou shalt be deflow'red, but not dishonested, and for amends we both shall live.

Hereupon the narrator (Madam Isabella) interposes an appeal to her audience: 'Sovereign madam, and you fair gentlewomen, I intreat you in Cassandra's behalf, these reasons well weighed, to judge her yielding a constraint and no consent.' This judgment' is further enforced by an express reference to Lucretia, whose 'destiny' she seeks to emulate.

What arrested Shakespeare in this story was clearly the three great dramatic situations, here rudely out

lined: the sister pleading for her brother's life, the stern lawgiver violating his own law, and the brother pleading for his life at the cost of his sister's honour. Whetstone had spoiled two of these by making both Promos and Andrugio plead with success, and he had only contrived, by a series of violent suppositions, to bring the fortunes of brother and sister to a happy issue. So far as Claudio's deliverance is concerned, Shakespeare improves somewhat, but not very greatly, upon his original. Instead of the compassionate gaoler who simply lets his prisoner free, we have the provost an admirable sketch of well-meaning but cautious and disciplined officialdom-who with difficulty consents merely to postpone his execution. Instead of the head of an executed prisoner, the counterfeit of Claudio is derived from 'a pirate who died this morning of a cruel fever' -a change which saves the plot from an incongruous element of tragedy, but is otherwise of questionable merit. Cassandra's fate called for a more radical change. Such a fall as hers was absolutely repugnant to Shakespeare's art; at no period of his career would he have tolerated such an incident, on either of the hypotheses between which Whetstone so uneasily fluctuates. But the device by which Isabel's honour is saved cannot be acquitted of a certain poverty of invention so supremely original a character as Isabel deserved a better fate than to play once more a played-out role from All's Well. The duke who wanders in disguise among his people and 'like power divine looks upon our passes,' has some advantages over Whetstone's absentee prince, but probability is not one of them; and his final distribution of rewards and punishments hardly affects to be plausible. Angelo's pardon and Isabel's marriage are concessions to the conventions of a comic dénoúment, lacking