Death
It is likely that the publication of The Two Angry Women of Abington was prompted by Porter’s death. The last definite record of him is an IOU in his hand in Henslowe’s diary on 26 May 1599. Leslie Hotson discovered the record of a case in the Southwark Assizes, which records the death of a Henry Porter on 7 June 1599 in Southwark. 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 killer is named as John Day, almost certainly the playwright of that name, who worked for Philip Henslowe. Although collaboration was common there is no record of Porter and Day working together. Ben Jonson, with whom Porter did collaborate, described Day as a “rogue” and a “base fellow”. 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, etc”. Although it is not recorded he seems to have obtained a Royal Pardon.
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”. The irony would be greater still if the author of this was the same Henry Porter granted a “Pardon de se defendendo”
Read more about this topic: Henry Porter (playwright)
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“if once the message greet him
That his True Love doth stay,
If Death should come and meet him,
Love will find out the way!”
—Unknown. Love Will Find Out the Way (l. 53–56)
“I’m beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of death among Americans. What you don’t know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright’s character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life—all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)