Measure for Measure - Sources

There is already a series of posts on Bacon’s connection to the play Measure for Measure. Now a little more.  As a reminder, this play was first known with the publication of the First Folio in 1623. One of Shakespeare’s primary sources for the play was The Right Excellent and Famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra: Divided into Commercial Discourses, by George Whetstone, published in 1578. Shakespeare also seemed to have used another Whetstone publication, The Roke of Regard (1576) when he wrote Much Ado About Nothing. This same George Whetstone, in 1579, wrote a biographical elegy in honor of Francis Bacon’s father, Sir Nicholas Bacon. In addition, Whetstone’s three brothers were at Gray’s Inn at the same time as Francis Bacon. So Bacon would almost surely be known to the Whetstone family and have easy access to George Whetstone’s published works.

http://www.shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/source.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Whetstone

Whetstone, George, 1544?-1587? A remembraunce, of the woorthie and well imployed life, of the Right Honorable Sir Nicholas Bacon Knight, Lorde Keeper of the Greate Seale of Englande, and one of the Queenes Maiesties most honorable priuie counsell, who deceased, the 20 daye of Februarie 1578. London : Imprinted ... for Myles Jennyngs [etc.], 1579.