Henry Porter (playwright) - Life

Life

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” and a “poor scholar”, and as the play is set in Abingdon, near Oxford, and shows knowledge of the area around Oxford it is assumed he studied there. Attempts to plausibly connect him with the records of the several Henry Porters at Oxford have been fruitless. He is known for one surviving play, The Two Angry Women of Abington, first published in two editions in London in 1599. The Two Angry Women was written before his first recorded work for Henslowe in 1598. Porter was praised by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia in 1598 as one of “the best for Comedy amongst us”. There is linguistic evidence that he may have contributed comic scenes to Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.

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