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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Henry porter and his one extant play, The Two Angrie Women of Abingdon, are included in nearly all the catalogues of dramatists since 1600, but none of them give us any information about the man, although Francis Meres in 1598 mentioned him along with Shakespeare as “the best for comedy amongst us,” and critics since that time have compared the Two Angrie Women not unfavorably with Shakespeare's early comedies. The popularity of Porter's plays may be inferred from the fact that he appears no less than twenty-four times between 1596 and 1599 in Henslowe's accounts with the Admiral's Men. The extent of his dramatic work is not accurately determined, but five plays are credited to him alone or to him in collaboration with Chettle or Ben Jonson.
1 The writer is deeply indebted to Mr. W. A. White for permitting the use of his first edition of The Two Angrie Women of Abingdon.
2 There is no discussion of identity in Kirkman: A Catalogue of all the Comedies, etc. to 1661. Old English Drama Series, Students' Facsimile edition, p. 2; Langbaine: Account of the English Dramatick Poets, Oxford 1691, pp. 406-7; Gildon's continuation: Lives and Characters of the English Poets, 1698, p. 112; Jacob: Poetical Register, 1723, Vol. I, p. 196; Whincop: Compleat List of all the English Dramatic Poets and of all the Plays ever Printed in the English Language to the Present year, 1747, p. 134; nor Hazlitt: Manual for Collectors and Amateurs of Old English Plays, 1892, p. 240.
There is no clue at all in Collier: History of English Dramatic Poetry to the time of Shakespeare, 1879; Fleay: A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1559-1642, 1890, and Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, 1559-1642, 1891; nor Dyce: Percy Society, Early English Poetry, Vol. V, 1841.
Gayley (Representative English Comedies, I, 518) says there is none in Malone's writings. Musgrave in his Obituaries (see note 33 below) shows confusion with the musician Henry Porter by listing the Biographia Dramatica, among other books, for information.
3 Quoted in The Facts about Shakespeare, Neilson and Thorndike, p. 215.
4 Dramatic Specimens and the Garrick Plays, page 426, Charles Lamb wrote (1808) “The Pleasant Comedy is contemporary with some of the earliest of Shakespeare's, and is no whit inferior to either the Comedy of Errors or The Taming of the Shrew, for instance.”
5 Henslowe's Diary: W. W. Greg edition 1904-8, 2 vols. (All diary references in this paper are to the Greg edition) Part I, pp. 44, 58, 87, 89, 93, 100-104, 107, 205.
6 Love Prevented, 2pte 1 Angrie Women, 2 Merrie Women.
7 Hot Anger Soon Cold with Chettle and Johnson; The Spencers begun, at least, with Chettle.
8 The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. Oxford 1923. III, 467.
9 First identified as the dramatist in Baker's Biographia (1764) Vol. I, p. 359 and again by Hunter: Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum (1838-1854) Vol. 2, p. 302. This identity was first questioned by Ronald Bayne in the Dict. of Nat. Biog. (1896) Vol. XLVI, p. 179 and Gayley doubts it (Rep. Eng. Com. I, 515-535).
10 This was an original suggestion by Chambers.
11 First noted by Havelock Ellis in Nero and Other Plays (1888), Mermaid row, 1911, p. 89.
12 Register of the University of Oxford, Ed. W. Boase and A. Clark.
13 Anthony à Wood, Athenœ Oxonienses, To which are added the Fasti, or Annals of the said University. Pub. 1691, Ed. 1815, I, 284.
14 Gayley (Rep. Eng. Com. I, 518) says, “before he took his degree, July 4, 1600.”
15 G. E. P. Arkwright: Catalogue of Music in the Library of Christ Church, Oxford, 1915, pt. I, p. 126.
16 Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1909, III, 795-6; Allegations for marriage licenses issued by the Bishop of London 1611-1828, Harleian Society Publications, XXVI, (1887), p. 198.
17 Louis Dyer, Oxford as It is, 1902, p. 15.
18 Reg. Univ. Oxford, II, pt. I, 145-6.
19 Ibid., Pt. II, 219, 223.
20 Registers of St. Mary le Bowe, Harleian Soc. Pub., Register Section, No. XLIV (1914), p. 4.
21 The instrument was a bass trumpet with a slide like that of a trombone.
22 H. C. de La Fontaine, The King's Musick, 1909, p. 45.
23 Chambers, Eliz. Stage, I, 49.
24 Ibid.
25 Dict. Natl. Biog., Vol. XVII, p. 230.
26 The King's Musick, p. 45.
27 Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I, 1603-1610. Public Record Office, page 16.
28 John Nichols: Progresses, Processions and Festivities of James I, etc., p. 508.
29 Ibid., p. 537.
30 Rep. Eng. Com. I, 520.
31 Included in Holinshed's Chronicle. The text here quoted is that in the 1577 ed., as reprinted by Furnivall for the New Shakespeare Soc., Lond. 1877, Part I, p. 128. Harrison's description of gentlemen, and other classes of society, was taken over verbally (with some abridgments) in Sir Thomas Smith's Manner of Government or Policies of the Realme of England, of which the first edition appeared in 1583. (See G. C. Lee, Source Book of English History, 1909, p. 299.
32 Rep. Eng. Com., I, 519.
33 Sir Wm. Musgrave: Obituaries prior to 1800 as far as relates to England, Scotland and Ireland. With reference to the Books where the persons are mentioned and where some account of their characters are to be found. Ed. Sir Geo. A. Armytage, 1899, Harleian Society Publications, Vol. 44, p. 64.
34 A personal search was kindly made for me in September, 1924, by Mr. J. A. Herbert, Deputy Keeper of the Manuscripts, British Museum.
35 Ed. R. B. McKerrow, 1911, p. 89.
36 Elizabethan Stage, III, 467.
37 Rep. Eng. Com., I, 519.
38 Mermaid Series, Porter, p. 90. Ellis says the verse was communicated to him by Bullen, the London editor.
39 McKerrow edition of Weever's Epigrammes, 1911, p. 9.
40 As noted by Douce in a copy of the Epigrammes in the Bodleian; see Gayley, Rep. Eng. Com., I, 518.
41 Gayley (Rep. Eng. Com., I, 518) states erroneously that Weever was an Oxford undergraduate.
42 Thomas Fuller: History of the Worthies of England (1840), II, 208. McKerrow in his edition of the Epigrammes, p. vi, states that Weever attended Queen's College,' Cambridge, 1594-98, and Mr. Thomas C. Fitzpatrick, President of Queen's College, in response to my inquiry, found the following entry in the Admission Book of Queen's College under the admission of Sizars: “1594 Joannes Weaver, Lanc'st, April 30.”
43 McKerrow Edition, p. 10.
44 Dict. Nat. Biog., Vol. 60, p. 149; also McKerrow Edit. Epigrammes, Intro. Note, p. vi.
45 Genealogist, quarterly magazine ed. by H. W. Forsyth Harwood, XXXVI (1920), 143.
46 Rep. Eng. Com., I, 519.
47 Ibid.
48 McKerrow (Epigrammes, Intro. note, p. ix) indicates that the punctuation of the original is carefully retained.
49 Publications of the British Record Society IV (1901), 334.
50 Phoebe Sheavyn (Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (1909), p. 157) says that among dramatists, the proportion of “gentlemen” was low and those who were in a position to do so, carefully insisted upon this gentility.
51 Geneologist, XXXVI, 143.
62 J. & J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (1924), Part I, Vol. III, p. 382.
“Porter, Henry Matric. sizar from Christ's, Michs. 1584.”
“Porter, Henry Matric. pens. from Corpus Christi, 1590.
One of these names V of Carbrooke, Norfolk, 1614.“
The same authors in Book of Matriculations and Degrees (1913) list two Henry Porters similarly, but with the dates 1586 and 1591, respectively, probably the same men.
53 The Dictionary of National Biography, under the individual names of the authors connected with the Admiral's Men, says Chapman, Haughton, Heywood, Jonson, and Rowley are the only ones known to have attended a university. All were Cambridge men. Chapman claimed to have been educated at both Cambridge and Oxford.
54 Mermaid Series, Porter, p. 91.
55 Vol. II, pt. II, p. 170.
56 Rep. Eng. Com., I, 519-20.
57 Berkshire Wills 1508-1652 (Index Library, British Society Publications, Vol. VIII) shows the majority of occurrences of the name “Porter” in London and in the sections lying between that city and the town of Oxford, centering in Berkshire with a preponderance in the town of Abingdon. James Townsend, History of Abingdon, 1910, says (p. 26): “Porters were evidently people of substance at the end of the 13th century” and (p. 25) that it is thought the family had many connections with the Abbey of Abingdon in the way of donations, etc. This lends interest to the Porter arms which are sable, three bells argent, canton ermine. The bells appear as heraldic charges, are supposed to have an ecclesiastical origin, and are usually blazoned church bells to distinguish them from grelots or hawk bells. See John Woodward, Treatise on Heraldry, 1896, I, 390.
58 Reg. Univ. Oxford, Part III, p. 5.
59 Ibid., Vol. II, pt. II, p. 170.
60 Ibid, Part I, Vol. II, p. 147.
61 Ibid. The regular course was seven years (p. 145).
62 Ibid. Vol. II, part III, p. 447. Anthony Wood says that he himself matriculated May 26, 1647, and had a certificate to that effect. Later when Wood came to search the matriculation register, he found that the bedell had not recorded his matriculation in any part of the book. Clark says that the certificate was with Wood, no doubt, as it was still when Clark wrote (1885-9), the ordinary testimony of matriculation and as such was probably produced when Wood took his degree.
63 Domestic Series, 1591-4, p. 135.
54 J. T. Murray, English Dramatic Companies, I, 114-8. About Feb. 1, 1593, all plays in London were stopped on account of the plague and no records show the Admiral's Men being at Court or in the city for the Winter season 1593-4.
65 Henslowe's Diary, part I, p. 44.
66 Ibid, pp. 87, 93, 100, 102-4.
67 Ibid, part II, p. 201.
68 Ibid, part I, p. 44.
69 Ibid, pp. 101, 104. See also p. 122.
70 Mermaid Series, Porter, p. 95.
71 Henslowe's Diary, part II, p. 118-122. Greg shows that Henslowe in his payments acted on behalf of the company “and was not himself interested in the transaction.”
72 In order for his completed plays he received 5 pounds, 6 pounds, 7 pounds, 5 pounds.
73 Henslowe's Diary, part I, p. 103.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid, p. 58.
76 Rep. Eng. Com., I, 523.
77 The extant play must have gone to print about this time.
78 Murray: English Dramatic Companies, I, 142.
79 Elias Ashmole: Antiquities of Berkshire, 1723, III, 75: “Here lyeth the Body of Mary Chettle the daughter of Henry Chettle; who dy'd the 2d of September, 1595. Ætatis Suæ 12 In memory of whome, Robert Gwine, Yœman of the Guard Hath caus'd this to be done.”
80 Henslowe's Diary, part 1, p. 101.
81 Ibid, p. 100.
82 Ibid, p. 103.
83 Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, I, 71.
