The drama is in Two Parts, and is
written in verse, with alternate rhymes. In his conduct of the story
Whetstone varies somewhat from the original; as the following abstract
will show:

In the city of Julio, then under the rule of Corvinus, King of
Hungary, there was a law that for incontinence the man should suffer
death, and the woman be marked out for infamy by her dress. Through
the indulgence of magistrates, this law came to be little regarded.
The government falling at length into the hands of Lord Promos, he
revived the statute, and, a youth named Andrugio being convicted of
the fault in question, resolved to visit the penalties in their utmost
rigour upon both the parties. Andrugio had a sister of great virtue
and accomplishment, named Cassandra, who undertook to sue for his
life. Her good behaviour, great beauty, and "the sweet order of her
talk" wrought so far with the governor as to induce a short reprieve.
Being inflamed soon after with a criminal passion, he set down the
spoil of her honour as the ransom. She spurned his suit with
abhorrence. Unable, however, to resist the pleadings of her brother,
she at last yielded to the man's proposal, on condition of his
pardoning her brother and then marrying her. This he vowed to do; but,
his end once gained, instead of keeping his vow, he ordered the jailer
to present Cassandra with her brother's head. As the jailer knew what
the governor had done, he took the head of a felon just executed, and
set Andrugio at liberty. Cassandra, supposing the head to be her
brother's, was at the point to kill herself for grief, but spared
that stroke, to be avenged on the traitor. She devised to make her
case known to the King; who forthwith hastened to do justice on
Promos, ordering that, to repair the lady's honour, he should marry
her, and then, for his crime against the State, lose his head. No
sooner was Cassandra a wife than all her rhetoric of eye, tongue, and
action was tasked to procure the pardon of her husband; but the King,
tendering the public good more than hers, denied her suit. At length,
Andrugio, overcome by his sister's grief, made himself known; for he
had all the while been about the place in disguise; whereupon the
King, to honour the virtues of Cassandra, pardoned both him and
Promos.

In 1592, Whetstone published his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_,
containing a prose version of the same tale. It is observable that he
deviates from Cinthio in bringing