The Porter thus apostrophized by John Weever has set sacred writ to music, but only after careful discipline leading to the musical art; and his wisdom has been proved by the result: "Thy silver bell" of music, says his admirer, "could not so sweetly sing, If that too soon thou hadst begun her ring." Mr. Havelock Ellis,[1594] to whom these verses were communicated by Mr. Bullen, understands them to refer to Porter the dramatist, and concludes therefrom, that he was "at the period of his dramatic activity a man of mature age."
But there is nothing in Weever's verses applicable to the dramatist as we know that personage: his extant play is anything but sacred, it presents no particular evidence of mature authorship, betrays no interest in musical affairs, yields no bell-tones of style or verse. While Weever was writing his Epigrams, 1596 to 1599, the dramatist was pursuing anything but a staid and silvern course at the Rose Theatre on the Bankside. The slowly matured composer of canticles, on the other hand, was completing a leisurely discipline at Christ Church, and to such a student Weever's eulogy admirably applies.[1595] In all probability the composer stuck to his metier. He was of a musical family: his son obtained recognition from Court for his musical attainments; and a kinsman, Dr. John Wilson, "a very eminent musician of whom there is a long notice in Wood," was professor of music at Oxford in 1656.[1596]
The familiarity with Oxford and its surroundings displayed in the drama of the two angry women who meet in the neighboring village of Abington is, however, indicative of Oxonian authorship, and we are again driven to the registers of the university in search of some available Henry Porter. There is, I find, but one capable, in point of chronology, of fulfilling the conditions:
"Matriculations: 19 June, 1589, Brazenose, Porter, Henry; Lond., gen. f. 16."[1597]
Concerning the academic career of this Henry Porter there is no information to be gathered from the records of university or college—why he was not admitted B.A., or why or when he left his college. I am apprised, however, by Mr. C. B. Heberden, the Principal of Brasenose, who at my request kindly instituted the requisite search, that such absence of information is not unusual, for the College Register was very imperfectly kept in the sixteenth century. If this was our Henry Porter, the author of the Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women, he was born in 1573, the son of a gentleman of London, he kept an uneventful term or so at Brasenose, and was perhaps still there in 1592 when his future associate in Henslowe's employ, John Marston, was matriculated. After his return to London he must have taken speedily to play-writing, for he was not more than twenty-three years of age when we find him selling his dramas to the Admiral's company for distinctly reputable sums. A modest straw in favour of the supposition that this was our dramatist is the explicit statement in both editions of our play to the effect that its author was Henry Porter, Gent. We have no proof that the Porter of Christ Church, who took his only degree after our play was printed, had any right in 1599 to sign himself Gentleman.
Dramatic Career.—Although, as I have said, only one of Porter's plays is extant, the entries in Henslowe, and their context, enable us to form some conception of his relation to the contemporary drama. They indicate that between December 16, 1596, and May 26, 1599, he was associated as a writer of plays with the Admiral, the Earl of Nottingham's company of actors, and that after February 28, 1599, his services were pledged to that company alone. It is possible that he had also acquaintance among the Earl of Pembroke's men, who were acting at The Rose for a short time during October and November, 1597, in partnership with the Admiral's company; but of this we cannot be certain, for we have no record of Porter's actions between March 7, 1597, and May 30 of the ensuing year.
The payment of December 16, 1596, is not in loan nor "in earnest of a boocke," but delivered as for a play then completed; and the sum, even if it were not a final instalment, would in itself indicate a play of some promise, for £6 or £7 was as much as Henslowe usually gave for a production even by an author already distinguished. If the payment was for a completed "boocke," the play would, according to the procedure of the Admiral's men, have been ready for presentation within a period of ten days to six weeks after the date of purchase. The following were the new plays presented by this company during that period: That Will Be Shall Be, December 30, 1596; Alexander and Lodowick, January 14, and Woman Hard to Please, January 27, 1597. Of these Alexander was the most successful, and That Will Be next.[1598] It is possible that the third play was the work of Heywood who had been recently paid 30s.—for a "boocke."[1599] As to Alexander, it is mentioned two years later as the property of Martin Slater,[1600] and there is reason to conjecture that it was written by him. But, even if these attributions were conclusive, we should not be justified in assuming—that the book remaining unassigned, That Will Be Shall Be, was the property for which Porter was paid on December 16, 1596. It is not, however, impossible that his first production was one of the three most popular plays put upon the boards at The Rose that season. That Henslowe's loan to Porter on the following March 7 had any connection with a play of December 16, 1596, is most unlikely. Henslowe was not by way of disbursing £9 for one "boocke." The date is also too remote from May 30, 1598, to permit of our connecting this loan with the payment for Love Prevented, there mentioned, let alone the objection that if the entries of March 7, 1597, and May 30, 1598, refer to the same play, the author was paid the unusually high sum of £8. But though we cannot prove that Porter made much out of Henslowe and the Admiral's men, it would seem that they made a good deal out of him. For after certain purchases from Porter and during the period within which the first performances of his plays must naturally have occurred, the theatre receipts increased appreciably. The play of May 30, 1598, for instance, would, according to custom, have been presented some time between June 10 and June 30. The only other new play that could during those weeks have assisted to swell the profits of the theatre was the First Part of Blacke Battman of the North, by distinguished authors, to be sure, but not extant. Henslowe's weekly receipts from "my Lord Admerall's mean" during the month before June 10 had averaged £3 16s. 3d.; during the period between June 10 and June 30 they rose to an average of £5 4s. 4d.; the week after June 30 they fell again to £2 11s. 6d.[1601] That Porter was at that time held in respect by Henslowe is shown by the transaction of June 26, when the crafty manager took his surety for the performance of a literary and pecuniary obligation by Chettle, than whom no one could have been habitually more in arrears. And that Porter's plays were worth having is proved by Henslowe's engaging, in February of the next year, everything that he might write, whether in partnership or alone. That this appreciation of his plays was shared also by the company appears from the unusual sums which they expended for the apparel and properties necessary to their presentation.[1602]
Of the playwrights at that time attached to the Admiral's company, the most intimately associated with Porter would appear to have been Chettle; and, through him, our poet must have been brought into close relations with Robert Wilson, who was Chettle's colleague in that Second Part of Blacke Battman, for the completion of which Porter went surety,—also with Dekker and Drayton, who had assisted in the writing of the First Part, and were, maybe, interested in the Second. In fact, Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, Wilson were boon companions in productivity and the 'marshallsey': to go bail for one of them was presumably to pay for all. With Ben Jonson, who was just then coming into notice as a dramatist, Henry Porter must have drained many a flagon. In August, 1598, these two have just finished writing a play in company with Chettle, Hot Anger Soon Cold, and are paid a fair price for it by Henslowe, who seems to regard Porter, however, as the principal author, for he enters his name first in the record. But if the returns from this play are included in Henslowe's receipts of the next two months, it cannot have been more than an ordinarily successful production.[1603]
During the latter part of 1598 our dramatist is engaged upon a play called by Henslowe the 2 Pte of the 2 angrey women of abengton. This was rehearsed during January and February, 1599, and by February 12, the day on which final payment was made to Porter, £11[1604] had been expended on properties for the performance. It was probably ready for presentation at that time, and its success may have assisted the sudden leap in Henslowe's share of the receipts from £7 10s., for the week ending February 18, to £15 3s., for the ten days ending February 29,[1605] 1599. This play paid Porter £7, a higher figure than Hot Anger had brought. Some two weeks later he is under contract to produce a sequel, the ij mery wemen of abenton, and only four days later still, March 11, he is engaged in a new partnership with Chettle to produce a play entitled The Spencers, or Despencers, a magnificent and tragic subject perhaps suggested by the reprinting of Marlowe's Edward II. during the preceding year.[1606] The Spencers was finished by the 22d of the same month. That it was looked upon as a play of great promise appears from the large amounts which, as already stated, were expended in its preparation for the stage. It was first acted some time after April 14. On the 16th Henslowe enters a final small disbursement for properties, of which perhaps the need was perceived during the first performance. His receipts for the week ending April 15 rise to £13 7s., four times as much as for the week before; while the entry, £13 16s., for the week next ensuing, during which the play was surely on the stage, is, with the exception of those of February 29, already mentioned, and of June 3,[1607] the largest that year. Perhaps by April 22 the novelty of The Spencers had begun to wear off, for there is again a drop in Henslowe's receipts, to £11 5s., the week ending April 29.[1608] This partnership with Chettle existed, by the way, in the year when Every Man in his Humour was in course of composition, and it ended just about a month before 'Bengemen' passed a rapier through Gabriel Spenser in Hoxton Fields.
Beside the playwrights already mentioned, Porter must have known in varying degrees of intimacy Heywood, Haughton, Day, Munday, Chapman, Hathaway, and, perhaps, Rankins, who were then writing for the company; also Samuel Rowley and Martin Slater, who appear to have been serving as actor-dramatists. With the players Downton, Richard Alleyn, Robert Shaw, and the polyonymous William Bird, Porter was associated in various business negotiations. Of course he knew the above-mentioned Gabriel Spenser, and Henslowe's son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, and the two Jeffes, and Towne and Singer, and the other active members of the company.