Henry Porter The Two Angry Women of Abington 1598

Henry Porter’s use of the literary phrase Beggars Bush is consistent with other early literary examples. It occurs in a play, now, like the author, largely forgotten. Like most other early writers he makes use of the vernacular, especially proverbs. There is some evidence linking Porter and his play to an area where there are early examples of the place name. His life and death link him to other writers who used the phrase, one of whom probably killed him.

Act 3 Scene II

COOMES  Well, sir, so it is, I would not wish ye to marry without my mistress’ consent.
FRANCIS  And why?
COOMES  Nay, there’s ne’er a why but there is a wherefore; I have known some have done the like, and they have danc’d a galliard at beggars’-bush for it.
BOY  At beggars’-bush! Hear him no more, master; he doth bedaub ye with his dirty speech.  Do ye hear, sir? how far stands beggars’-bush from your father’s house, sir?  Why, thou whoreson refuge of a tailor that wert’ prentice to a tailor half an age, and because, if thou hadst served ten ages thou wouldst prove but a botcher, thou leapst from the shop-board to a blue coat, doth it become thee to use thy terms so? well, thou degree above a hackney, and ten degrees under a page, sew up your rubber lips, or ’tis not your sword and buckler shall keep my poniard from your breast . . .”

Usage

Henry Porter uses Beggar’s Bush in a literary sense of going to ruin, and as a figure of speech that his audience will not need explained to them. Although the play does mention real places in and around Abingdon in Oxfordshire there is no sign that Porter was intending to refer to a real place.

The play is full of proverbs. One character, Nicholas Proverb, a serving man, has almost no lines that are not proverbs. One character complains of him:
“This formall foole, your man, speakes naught but proverbs,
And speake men what they can to him, hee’l answere
With some rime, rotten sentence, or old saying,
Such spokes as the ancient of the parish use.”
Coombs in the extract is a swashbuckling serving man. He is a foil to Proverb’s straight man, who would be played as a foolish simpleton or rustic philosopher.

It is notable that of the one hundred and fifty proverbs in the play only eighteen can be traced to the earlier collection The Proverbs, Epigrams, and Miscellanies of John Heywood (1546 & 1562). Beggars Bush is not amongst these. This suggests that Porter was using the phrase from common usage.

The Text

A botcher was a person who did things badly. A galliard was a lively dance. A blue coat was a common uniform for those in service or receiving poor relief. A hackney was a person doing servile work for hire.

The Two Angry Women of Abington

The Play was first published in two editions in London in 1599. It is the only work by Porter to have survived.

The Two Angry Women of Abington has been compared favourably in style and quality to The Merry Wives of Windsor (generally dated 1597-1601). It is a rollicking country piece including two comic characters, Dick Coomes and Nicholas Proverbs, who are advertised in the title page of one original edition. There are unconvincing arguments that The Two Angry Women of Abington must have been written before as early as 1588, based on the rhyming pattern, style and structure, and from a supposed reference to it in Plaine Percevall, a pamphlet published in response to the Marprelate Tracts. However, Evett refutes these and argues convincingly that as Henslowe records a payment in December 1598 for the second part of the play that the first part must have been written and performed shortly before that. Henslowe also gave Porter an advance against a sequel The Two Merry Women of Abington, so the play must have been popular.

Henry Porter

Porter is recorded there as a co-author of several plays including Hot Anger soon Cold with Ben Jonson and Henry Chettle. The linguistic evidence that he contributed comic scenes to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is not generally accepted. Porter was praised by Francis Meres in his Palladio Tamia (1598) as one of “the best for Comedy amongst us”.

Very little is known about Henry Porter’s life beyond the entries in diary of Philip Henslowe the theatre manager. He is described as a “gentleman” & a “poor scholar” and as the play shows knowledge of the area around Oxford it is assumed he studied there. There are various candidates. The most likely is Henry Porter son of a gentleman, born in London in 1573, who matriculated from Brasenose College in 1589 but did not take a degree.

Porter first appears in Henslowe’s Diary in December 1596 when he was loaned £5, and the next year was another £4. In the year from May 1598 he was recorded as having some part in five plays, three his alone, and two with Henry Chettle and Ben Jonson. The sums advanced to Porter suggest that his plays were popular, or he was impecunious, or both – only Chettle borrowed more. It has been suggested that some of money received from Henslowe was used to pay Chettle’s debts, or perhaps Porter’s debts to Chettle; in June 1598 Henslowe notes that an advance to 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 acquired the sole rights of any play in which Porter had written till then, in return for an advance of forty shillings. Henslowe only did this on one other occasion – again this was with Chettle. Although it might have reflected Porter becoming a popular writer, it suggests an inequality in their bargaining positions and desperation on the part of the playwright. Porter’s borrowings became more frequent, and the sums allowed less. On one occasion two months before his death Henslowe loaned him, at his insistence, 12d “in that Instante” with a forfeit of £10 if it was not repaid on time – which it was not.

Death and Publication

The publication of two quartos of The Two Angry Women in 1599 was also likely to have been prompted by his death. They were not entered in the Stationer’s Register. The editions show signs of haste and inaccuracy, and to have been taken from a writer’s rather than a prompt copy.

The last definite record of him is an IOU in his hand in Henslowe’s diary on 26 May 1599. There is a record of case in the Southwark Assizes, which records the death in Southwark of a Henry Porter on 7 June 1599. He is recorded as having been struck a mortal wound in the left breast with a rapier “of the value of two shillings” the previous day. The rapier was a fashionable but particularly dangerous weapon, 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” saying that “a good sword-and-buckler man will be spitted like a cat or a coney [rabbit]”.

The killer is named as John Day, probably another playwright first recorded by Henslowe the previously July. He is another writer who used the phrase Beggar’s Bush. Although collaboration was common, there is no record of Porter and Day working together. Jonson, with whom Porter did collaborate, described Day as a “rogue” and a “base fellow”. John Day was charged with murder, but admitted manslaughter, on the grounds of self-defence, his plea in formal terms being that “he fled to a certain wall beyond which he could in no wise go without peril of his life”. Although it is not recorded he seems likely he obtained a Royal Pardon.

Violent death in the theatrical community was not rare; the murder of Christopher Marlowe is well known, as is Ben Jonson’s killing an actor in a duel in 1598. Jonson was convicted of murder and only escaped death by pleading Benefit of Clergy, and being branded. It is even possible that Henry Porter had himself killed someone – a man of that name was pardoned in 1591 for the death of a John Cotterell in Westminster, which might also account for his not taking a degree.

The play, and Porter’s death, may have contributed to the distribution of the phrase. The Admiral’s Men had spent much of the 1590’s performing outside London, because of the plague and on tour. Only a month after Porter’s death they were playing in Canterbury. It is likely that the play would have been put on then, both by the Admirals’ Men and possibly by other companies to whom the text then became available.

Further Reading & Text

Evett, M. B., (ed) 1980 Henry Porter’s The two angry women of Abington : a critical edition, New York: Garland

Text available here (search for title)

Text at Wikisource

Simons J. & Jardine M. (eds) 1987 Henry Porter, The Two Angry Women of Abington, Nottingham Drama Texts.

Morris, Alton C., ‘Proverbial Lore in ‘”The Two Angry Women of Abington”‘ Folklore Studies in Honor of Arthur Palmer Hudson, (North Carolina Folklore, XIII [1965] Special Issue, p.26

Hotson, Leslie M., 1931. The Adventure of a Single Rapier, Atlantic Monthly, July 1931

Nosworthy, J.M., 1940  Notes on Henry Porter, Modern Languages Review 35 , p.517.

Nosworthy, J.M., 1946. Henry Porter, English 6, p.65.

Thanks

Prof. Philip Coyle, Western Carolina University

Posted: March 27th, 2011 | Filed under: Writers | Tags: Ben Jonson, Brian Twyne, Henry Chettle, Henry Porter, John Day, Literary, Marprelate Tracts, Oxford, Philip Henslowe, proverb | No Comments »