Most of the playwrights in Henslowe's pay lived in hand-to-mouth style; but in art of cozening groats from the manager who in turn squeezed angels from the dramatist, none excelled 'Harey' Chettle. It is instructive to note that, from the period of close intimacy with Chettle, Porter sinks ever deeper in Henslowe's debt. On January 17, 1599, he had borrowed a pound of Henslowe. He was then, still, in the heyday of his success; but only six weeks later, February 28, we find Henslowe, under cover of a further beggarly advance, acquiring a lien on all his productivity. A few days after that the two 'Hareys,' doubtless with a hope of release from the moneylender's grip, are sweating out The Spencers for him; and Chettle, with or without Porter's knowledge, is borrowing another half-sovereign in earnest of its completion. When, on March 22, the joint production is finished, the dramatists are paid less for it than The Second Part of the Two Angry Women had brought to Porter alone; and before it is acted Porter has given his note of hand to Henslowe for another pound; and so proceeds the declension of 'Harey' Porter. Between December 16, 1596, and June 26, 1598, he had been Henslowe's 'Mr. Porter'; as soon as he begins to borrow, January 17, 1599, he is 'Harey' with a rare reversion to the ancient style; after April 7 there is no reversion. The loans, too, which at first were of a dignified amount, suddenly fall to 2s. 6d. Familiarity has bred as usual; and, by April 16, 'Harey,' who at this time owes the manager 25s., is compelled in consideration of 1s. to clear his debt on the morrow or forfeit £10. Next day Shylock has him, but for some reason continues to dribble out the sixpences until May 26. Then 'Harey' signs the last I. O. U. of which we have record, and drops out of history and Henslowe with as little warning as he had entered.
Date of the Extant Play.—Porter wrote two plays and engaged to write a third on the Women of Abington. Of a First Part of the Two Angry Women, there is no record in Henslowe, at least under that name. But of the Second Part the entries of December 22, 1598, and February 12, 1599, make explicit mention; and an intervening note of January 31, 1599, which records an outlay for the play without specification of the part is by date and position evidently a reference to this same Second Part. According to the entries of February 12, the sum of £2 was on that day expended in a concluding purchase of properties for the performance, and an equal amount was given to Porter in final payment for the "boocke" entitled the 2 pte. of the angry wemen of abington. So closes all record of that second part. The payment of £2, two weeks later, February 28, is the usual advance "in earneste of" a "boocke" not yet finished; but the title of it was the ij mery women of abenton, and it was undoubtedly intended to be a continuation of the general theme. There is, however, no record of final payment (of £4 or £5) as in other cases, and no proof that the play was completed. I have no doubt that the play of which the text is here given, The Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women of Abington, is the unrecorded First Part, above mentioned. Our drama was twice printed in 1599 "as it was lately playde by ... the ... Admirall his servants," and it had, in all probability, been in the possession of the company for some time before publication; whereas the Second Part was only first acted in that year, and would not, with the consent of the company, have been turned over to printers. For it was to the player's interest to restrict his dramatic stock-in-trade, while it was novel, to the play-house. That the non-extant play of December 22, 1598-February 12, 1599, which is explicitly called the Second Part, was preceded by The Pleasant History is, moreover, confirmed by the title-page of The Pleasant History, which is unconscious of predecessor and sequel alike. By how long a period, then, did our play precede the missing Second Part? The words "as it was lately playde" on the title-pages of both editions may or may not be advertisement. But there is, at any rate, no likelihood that the first performance antedated May 14, 1594, when the Admiral's men began their long engagement with Henslowe; nor that it fell between that date and December 16, 1596, for it does not appear (nor any name that suggests it) in Henslowe's consecutive list of plays performed by the Admiral's men during that period. And since Henslowe observed his method of entry by days and plays until November 5, 1597, the Pleasant History would have been specified in that part of the diary[1609] if the first payment to Porter, December 16, 1596, or the loan of the succeeding March 7, had been for a play bearing that name. Since there is no mention of a Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women of Abington before the close of Henslowe's daily register, nor of a First Part of the Two Angry Women between that date and December 22, 1598, when negotiations are in progress for a Second Part, it would seem that, whether our play came into existence before or after November 5, 1597, it must have first passed under some other name.
In the former alternative not even the wildest conjecture can identify it with any title recorded by Henslowe before March 7, 1597, except Woman Hard to Please, and that is more suitable to the subject of Heywood's Challenge for Beauty than of our Pleasant History. It is not until two months after the loan of March 7—four pounds to Porter—that one comes upon the first performance of the only play of that period that can at all correspond with the Pleasant History. This is the successful but as yet unidentified Comodey of Umers, for the writing of which Henslowe records no payment, although he marks it "new" and makes entries which show that it was acted no less than twelve times at his "howsse" between May 11 and October 11 of that year, and that it supplanted Alexander and That Will Be in the favour of the public. It has been held, to be sure, that this anonymous Comodey was Every Man in his Humour; but that is impossible, for Ben Jonson himself states that Every Man was brought out during the next year, 1598, and not by the Admiral's, but by the Lord Chamberlain's servants,[1610] while Henslowe includes The (Comodey of) Umers even the year after it had been acted by the Admiral's company in his "Note of all such bookes as belong to the Stocke [of that same company], and such as I have bought since the 3d of Marche, 1598."[1611] Mr. Fleay thinks that the Comodey was Chapman's Humerous Dayes Mirth, and Dr. Ward inclines to accept the conjecture; but I think that Mr. Fleay's plea in favour of Chapman's play will apply as well to Porter's Pleasant History, the subtitle of which advertises "the humorous mirth of Dick Coomes and Nicholas Proverbes," while the scenes develop "humours," which are much more natural than those of Chapman's play, and fall but little short, indeed, of the quality that characterizes B. J.'s Every Man in his Humour. As far as plot goes I cannot for a moment believe that the ineptitudes of the Humerous Dayes Mirth can have commanded the popularity which was achieved by the Comodey of Umers.
If, however, according to the latter alternative, the Pleasant History came into existence between November 5, 1597, and December 22, 1598, the attempt to identify it with the Comodey of Umers falls to the ground. But another possibility at once presents itself: for the only mention by Henslowe of a play produced in the interim by Porter alone is of "a boocke called Love Prevented."[1612] For this a payment of £4 is made on May 30, 1598; and until Love Prevented turns up, and turns out to be other than our play, it will be open to conjecture whether under this title we have not the earliest record of the Pleasant History of the Two Angry Women. For not only is this the sole title assigned to Porter alone during the period under consideration, it is also a title fairly descriptive of the central movement of the Pleasant History.[1613] The date of payment, moreover, would accord with the assertion of recent performance which appears upon the title-page of our play as printed; it would also allow for a reasonable lapse of time before the publication, which was not by license and was probably of a printed copy. If this conjecture be correct, the date of our play is May 30, 1598; and we have an explanation, in part, of Henslowe's increased receipts during the month following. If, on the other hand, our play be the Comodey of Umers, the date of its first presentation is May 11, 1597. Whether these identifications be correct or not, the play may be dated between December 16, 1596, and December 22, 1598, and it was probably known to Meres when during the latter year he included Porter among the writers of comedy.[1614]
Dramatic Qualities: Construction.—Of the plot we may cry with Goursey, "Here's adoe about a thing of nothing." Not this, but occasional situations and the subconscious qualities of humour and verisimilitude lend distinction to the play. The Pleasant History has atmosphere and therefore entity. It is a creation. Its characters stand out. Porter knew their ways and words before he knew their history. He had met them out Cumnor way or Hinksey, by Bagley, Abington, and Milton on many a cross-country stroll. What basis there was for Mrs. Barnes's jealousy, whether Master Barnes had too often gone to Milton "a-hunting or such ordinary sports," and, once too often, "chatted with" Mrs. Goursey "all day till night," we are not explicitly informed. Nor is the dramatist. That Mrs. Goursey has given no cause for offence goes without saying. But there is trouble in the air. The wives are angered: after a dissension sufficiently prolonged to afford us an insight into them and their surroundings, their wrath shall be appeased. How, we know not; nor does the dramatist, but it seems to him natural, if not novel, that the son and daughter of these foes should with their marriage "bury their parents' strife." That end he pursues, carrying all with him except those whom he most would carry. When the hour is nigh and we are expectant, and the star-crossed lovers have made for Carfax to be wed, they lose each other and everybody else in a midsummer night's "cunny greene," where, whence, and whither, darkling, the dramatic persons play blindman's buff with the plot till, frustrate of discovery, they despair. Then in steps Sir Raph Smith, ex tenebris et machina, to find the heroine, and prophesy solution and "the lanthorne of the day" and lend our hopes a fillip, but straight to lose us worse than ever in the devious night. Beholders and beheld all now despair. And Porter might still be spasmodically rounding his rabbits into the "cunny greene" and out again, had not the quarrelsome wives happened each on other, and on them in turn their husbands happened, who simulating mortal combat succeed at last in terrifying their women into peace. Only after the characters most concerned have thus by chance taken the solution into their own hands and effected the reconciliation, does the peacemaker intended by the dramatist drop in with the lost sweetheart on his arm; and the union of the young lovers, which had been designed to promote the union of their mothers, proceeds on its own merits, superfluous, like the second tail on the proverbial toad. The plot, therefore, is not the "thing." Not only does it pursue half a dozen possibilities, each of which it drops halfway; it starts another half-dozen, which it never pursues. But the auditor, unforewarned, pricks to each wild-goose chase in turn. The complication of the angry women and the subplot of the lovers, with its pretence of a solution, move rapidly through the first, third, sixth, and eighth scenes; but in the second and fourth the farcical element retards the pace; in the seventh a new and futile start is made, and in the ninth the platt itself slides into a kind of commedia all' improviso. From this it is rescued at the beginning of Scene xii. by Master Barnes's "pollicie." But although his "drift device" is of the utmost importance to the audience, I have my doubts whether any hearer has caught the hint, and I am sure that to most readers the sham combat between the husbands in Scene xiv. comes as something impromptu and secondary. Consequently a luxury of anticipation has been forfeited. The "pollicie" is in itself a capital ruse for curing shrewishness, and it has been frequently used of later years, as, for instance, in Gillette's Because She Loved Him So; but in 1597 it had the additional charm of novelty, and deserved a better handling. The situation in Scene vi., where Mrs. Goursey snatches and restores her husband's letter, is, conversely, well prepared, but lacks all consequent. The marksman draws his bow to the top of its bent, then gradually relaxes the tension—because he has forgot his arrow. But, though Porter is guilty of imperfect devices, few English comedies before his time can boast of scenes more realistic and humorous than the game at tables, the burlesque wooing of Mall at her window, and the comic irony of the climax between the disputatious mothers under whose beaks the debated chickens are eloping. In fact, with all crudities, the plot develops an interesting individuality, for which the author does not seem to be at all responsible; none the less interesting if "a German from the waist downward, all slops, and a Spaniard from the hip upward, no doublet."
Portrayal of Character.—When we turn to the "persons" and their "humours" we realize the architectonics of the play. There is something at once natural and masterly in the ease with which Porter introduces the condition of "neighbour amitie," wherewith the masters delude themselves, while their spouses blow upon the coals of hatred: the hostess, teeming with innuendo,—"malice embowelled in her tongue,"—the lady of Milton read in Æsop's fables, quick to conjecture, and "every day as good as Barnes's wife," whether to divert a moral or direct a curse. And as the women promise they develop: Mrs. Barnes, a "jealous, slandering, spiteful queane"; Mrs. Goursey, subtler and fairer spoken, but incapable of backgammon "if slanders by doe talke,"—patently obedient, but impatient of rebuke, soothing her husband with soft words, but, inward, fuming at his "Peace, be quiet, wife"; easily his better, bidding him "grow to the housetop with your anger, Sir," and then humouring his pleasure, not because of his "incensement," but his "health." The opprobrious epithets of Barnes's wife Mistress Goursey returns into her teeth; damns her as "mankind"; takes up the quarrel last and is last to lay it down. In fact, as Mistress Goursey is the more independent of the twain, she is also historically the more original. Mrs. Barnes, on the other hand, is an amalgam of stock shrews, gossips, and jealous wives: a descendant of Tom Tyler's more strenuous half, a kinswoman of Dame Chat, a Kitely in petticoats, the remote grandmother of Colman's Mrs. Oakly.
Barnes and Goursey are henpecked husbands of the remordent variety. Barnes, the more experienced in domestic infelicity, is correspondingly the more given to moral tags and pregnant sentences. He sometimes rises almost to poetry, as when he tells his wife:—
Are bastards got by rashness in the thoughts;"
from bathos he is just saved by a sense of the incongruous: "O doe not" begs he of the virago whom he styles "sweete,"