Henry Porter (playwright)

Henry Porter († probably June 7, 1599 ) was an English playwright.

Live and act

Beyond the entries in the diary ( Diary ) of the theater manager Phillip Henslowe is about Henry Porter little known. There he is characterized as a gentleman and a poor scholar . Since one of his plays is set in Abingdon near Oxford and shows knowledge of the region, it is believed that Porter studied in Oxford.

Efforts to relate it to sources from various Henry Porters at Oxford have so far been fruitless. About his only remaining play The Two Angry Women of Abington has become known that it was published in two editions in London in 1599. The piece must have been written before it was first recorded in Henslowe's Diaries in 1588. Porter was mentioned by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia 1598 as one of the best comedy writers among us (as one of “the best for Comedy amongst us”).

Linguistic evidence seems to suggest that Porter contributed to some comical scenes of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe . The play The Two Angry Women of Abington was awarded the Shakespeare play The Merry Wives of Windsor favorably compared in terms of quality and style. It's a high-spirited, boisterous rural piece that includes two hilarious characters, "Dick Coomes" and "Nicholas Proverbes," who are also featured on the cover of an original edition. Henslowe's records suggest various payments for the book and costumes of the play in 1598. The play must have been performed before 1589, as there is a reference to these figures in Plaine Percevall , a pamphlet from that year in response to Martin Marprelate .

Henslowe's Diary also mentions other pieces such as Love Prevented (1598), Hot Anger soon Cold , with Henry Chettle and Ben Jonson (1598), The second part of "The Two Angry Women of Abingdon" (1598), The Four Merry Women of Abingdon (1599), and The Spencers (1599), again with Chettle. It seems possible that Part Two of The Two Angry Women was not a separate, independent work. It is also not clear whether the later pieces were delivered before Porter's death. In 1598, Porter and Chettle received 20 shillings to write a second part of the play Black Batman of the North . It has been suggested that some of the money Porter received from Henslowe was used on Chettle's debts. The overall considerable sums paid by Henslowe to Porter show that Porter's pieces must have been very popular, and the entries also suggest that Porter was unreliable.

Henslowe noted that the loan to Porter and Chettle was made after Porter “ hath geven me his worde for the performance of the same and all so for my money ”. In February 1599, Henslowe obtained sole rights to all pieces from Porter for a substantial consideration of forty shillings. Porter's borrowing grew more frequent and the sums approved were less. It seems likely that the release of The Two Angry Women of Abington was triggered by Porter's death. The last certain entry about him is an IOU in Henslowe's diary on May 26, 1599.

Leslie Hotson discovered the records of a case in the Southwark Assizes that reported the death of Henry Porter on June 7, 1599 in Southwark. It is reported about him that the day before he received a fatal wound in the left chest from a rapier, which was worth about two shillings. The playwright John Day was named as the murderer , although this was probably a different playwright than the one who worked for Philip Henslowe (?). Although joint writing was common at the time, there is no evidence that Day and Porter worked together. Ben Jonson , with whom Porter also worked, described Porter as a rascal and a base fellow. Day was charged with murder but convicted of negligent homicide on the grounds of his self-defense. His formal defense was that "he fled to a certain wall beyond which, etc". Although no records exist, he appears to have quickly received a "royal pardon". The rapier was an elegant, dangerous weapon that was more likely to cause death than traditional swords.

It is ironic that one of the characters in The Two Angry Women laments “ this poking fight of a rapier and dagger ” by saying that “a good sword-and-buckler will be spitted like a cat or a coney ”. The irony would be even greater if that author had been the same Henry Porter who was pardoned for self-defense, as stated in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series , 1591-4, p. 135 (see Shears) is recorded.

Pieces

• Wikisource. The Two Angry Women of Abington

literature

• H. Porter: The two angry women of Abington , ed.WW Greg (1913)
• Rosetta E. Shears: New Facts About Henry Porter , PMLA 42 (1927) 642
• EHC Oliphant: Who was Henry Porter? PMLA, Vol. 43, 1928
• Leslie M. Hotson: The Adventure of a Single Rapier , Atlantic Monthly, July 1931
• JM Nosworthy: Notes on Henry Porter , The Modern Language Review, Vol. 35 (1940),
• Henry Porter's The two angry women of Abington , ed.MB Evett (New York, 1980)
• Jacques Savarit: Henry Porter Revisited: Hints and Cues Towards a Fuller Acceptance of Conventional Topoi in the Two Angry Women of Abington (Relié) Intl Scholars Pubns (1997)