24. P. 94. Lent Harey Porter, the 15 of maye 1599, the some of
ijˢ 6ᵈ
(Signed) HENRY PORTER
25. P. 94. Be it knowne unto all men, that I, Henry Porter, do owe
unto Phillip Henchlowe the some of xˢ, of lawfull money of England,
wcʰ I did borrowe of hym the 26 of maye, aº dom. 1599.
HENRY PORTER[1586]
=Other Early Notices.=--Meres, in the _Palladis Tamia_, 1598, names
our dramatist as one of the best for comedy among us, and places him
in good company: Lyly, Lodge, Gascoigne, Greene, Shakespeare, Nashe,
Thomas Heywood, Munday, Chapman, Wilson, Hathaway, and Chettle. It
is perhaps worthy of remark that, beginning with Nashe, all these
playwrights were at the time Porter's associates in the employ of
Henslowe and the Admiral's company, and that in this list our poet
rubs shoulders with Chapman and Wilson. Much less flattering are the
references in Richard West's _Court of Conscience or Dick Whipper's
Sessions_, 1607,[1587] to "ruffianly Dick Coomes" (Poem to _Prophane
Swearers_) and "Nimble-tongued Nicholas as the Proverbe saith" (Address
to _Liers_), which are undoubtedly allusions to our play[1588]:
for although Porter's Nicholas is not a liar, his Coomes is, in
the extreme, ruffianly and profane. The context of _The Court of
Conscience_ would indicate, however, that West was availing himself,
to some extent, of nicknames proverbial among the vulgar, such as
Suckblood, Tom Taylor, Money Monger, and Nicholas Newfangle. That
Porter's play was still in circulation as late as 1661 is shown by its
inclusion in Kirkman's Catalogue of that date.
=Conjectural Identity.=--Malone, Collier, and Dyce give no clue; in
fact they do not exhaust the materials in Henslowe. Langbaine mentions
only the printed play. Hunter, in his _Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum_[1589]
says "it can hardly be doubted that this is the same Henry Porter of
Christ Church who was made Bachelor of Music in July, 1600 (_Alumn.
Oxon._ III. 1182). Wood says that he had seen some of his compositions,
but thinks none were extant when he wrote. This Henry Porter was
father of Walter Porter, Master of the Choristers at Westminster, who
had friends in Sir Edward Spencer and Edward Laurence. He was related
to Dr. John Wilson." Foster in the _Alumni Oxonienses_, tells us, in
addition, that Walter became gentleman of the Chapel Royal of Charles
I. This information is all traceable to Wood's _Fasti_,[1590] but Wood
does not attempt to identify Henry Porter the dramatist with Henry
Porter the musical composer. Of the latter we learn, from the _Register
of the University of Oxford_,[1591] that he had studied music for
twelve years and had "composed" before he took his degree, July 4,
1600. There is no record of a degree in arts, nor of matriculation,
at Christ Church; this musical activity would seem, however, to have
occupied the career of the future bachelor of music from a date eight
years before Porter the dramatist appeared in Henslowe's employ to
a date after our poet had borrowed his last half-crown from that
employer. "The statutable conditions for the degree of Mus. Bac." at
that time, say Boase and Clark,[1592] "were that the candidate should
have been seven years _in re musica_, and that he should compose and
cause to be sung in the university a _canticum quinque partium_, giving
three days' notice of the performance of this exercise." That a student
like Porter of Christ Church, who had proceeded leisurely through his
course in music, taking twelve years instead of the seven prescribed,
and who, meanwhile, was composing canticles on elevated and, probably,
sacred themes, should be a man of maturity and acknowledged worth is
only natural to suppose. And such was the esteem in which Porter of
Christ Church was held by an Oxford undergraduate of that day, who
addresses him in the following verses, published in 1599:[1593]--
"AD HENRICUM PORTER
Porter I durst not mell with sacred writ,
Nor woe the mistris fore I win the maide;
For my yong yeres are taskt; its yet unfitte,
For youth as eld is never halfe so staid.
Thy selfe which hath the summe of Art and Wit
Thus much I know unto me would have said;
Thy silver bell could not so sweetly sing
If that too soone thou hadst begun her ring."
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 16_s._ 3_d._; during the period between June 10 and
June 30 they rose to an average of £5 4_s._ 4_d._; the week after June
30 they fell again to £2 11_s._ 6_d._[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 10_s._, for
the week ending February 18, to £15 3_s._, 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 7_s._, four times as much as for the week
before; while the entry, £13 16_s._, 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
5_s._, 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.
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 2_s._
6_d._ Familiarity has bred as usual; and, by April 16, 'Harey,' who
at this time owes the manager 25_s._, is compelled in consideration of
1_s._ 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:--
"Rough, wrathful words
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,"
"O, doe not set the organ of thy voice
On such a grunting tone of discontent!
Doe not deforme the beautie of thy tongue
With such mishapen answeres."
It is appropriate that upon him who has given rise to the brief
unpleasantness by inviting guests without his wife's consent, should
rest the _onus_ of devising the effective "pollicie" of reconciliation.
From him Goursey is well differenced. Possessed of a finer wife and a
quicker temper, when the former, contrary to expectation, crosses the
latter he well-nigh falls into an apoplexy. Oaths he abhors, but in
the access of his rage swears horribly and apologizes to the Almighty
between breaths.
That the morals of the sons reproduce those of the sires in their
salad days, I reluctantly suspect. It is the recital of young Frank's
licentiousness that convinces young Philip that here is just the
husband for Sister Mall. And--considering that Mall is frankly and
squarely what her mother calls her, a "lustie guts" and "vile girl," in
fact her mother's daughter, fit to "floute the devill and make blush
the boldest face of man that ere man saw" a swearing wench whose only
claim to morals is unmorality--Philip's judgment is correct. There is,
in my opinion, no coarser-minded girl in Elizabethan comedy; and at
the same time there obtains no dramatic portrayal of the animal more
observantly conceived or more faithfully executed. That she is, as Mr.
Ellis says, less sophisticated than Congreve's Prue, is not exactly to
her credit. Nor need I make her out "a wholesome, robust English girl
... with a brave openness, loving and sincere," in order to justify my
appreciation of Porter's skill in creating her. She is, indeed, robust
and Elizabethan, seventeen and upward; but within she is a mate for
Caliban; no relation to Prue,--rather a link between Wapull's Wilful
Wanton and Vanbrugh's Hoyden. It is hardly necessary to point out
the literary and dramatic affinities of Sir Raph and his wife: the
buck-hunting squire and the lady tender-hearted and "pitous."
The foregoing are characters of broad outline; but each has, as well,
his quirk of conduct, manners, or of style. The jealous wife with her
"stopt compares"; "Mistresse Would-Have," who has "let restrainèd
fancy lose," and sworn to lead no apes in hell; her brother, a poet at
second-hand, and "sick discourser" of his sister's wit; Nan Lawson's
lover of "quick invention" and "pleasure-aiming mind,"--these and
others of the major movement are as palpably in their "humours" as Mrs.
Otter, Doll Common, Master Stephen, or Kitely, or Truewit. And when we
turn to the secondary group we find the "humours" not only advertised
upon the title-page but specified in the text. Dick Coomes is "humord
bluntly" to brag and swear and drink and quarrel and talk bawdy. "I
see, by this dearth of good swords, that dearth of sword-and-buckler
fight begins to grow out; I am sorry for it," complains this
swashbuckler serving-man. With "Sbloud!" he comes upon the stage, and
there's little left of God unhallowed when Coomes subsides beneath his
buckler in the dark. "Why, what a swearing keeps this drunken asse,"
exclaims Francis. "Peace, do not marre his _humour_," Phil replies.
"Away, bawdie man," cries Hodge, and even the Boy must say, "Here him
no more, maister; he doth bedawbe ye with his durty speche." He has a
"merrie _humour_," too, this Coomes, of punning, and has brought "the
apparell of his wit ... into fashion of an honor." A Thraso of the
servants' hall, he'll outswear any 'Pharaoh's foot' of a tailor's shop.
He can dispute precedence with Ancient Pistol as "the foul-mouthedst
rogue in England"; and when he's in his "quarreling _humour_," not
Pistol, nor Bobadil, nor the 'humorous' Nim could swagger to Dawson's
close or out of a horse-pond with a more humorous grace. It is to be
noted that, in his first lines, Coomes animadverts upon "the humour of
those young springals," his masters, who "will spend all their fathers'
good at gaming"; also that Philip's servingman has his humour both of
manners and of style: "a spruce slave," cross-gartered like Malvolio,
"a nosegay bound with laces in his hat," "all proverbes in his speech
... because he would speak truth," a dramatic Camden or Ray, who
quotes Latin withal, and is as marked in his "humour" as Coomes and
Franke's Boy, and Mall and Mrs. Barnes in theirs.
=Place in the History of Comedy.=--It would, therefore, be of no
small importance to determine whether this _Pleasant History_ is
Henslowe's _Comodey of Umers_ of May 11, 1597; for if it be, this play
of characteristics precedes _Every Man in his Humour_, and disputes
the "place peculiar to itself in our dramatic literature" which most
critics have assigned to that masterpiece of Ben Jonson. But even if it
be not the play of May 11, 1597, our drama was certainly written before
December 22, 1598, probably by May 30 of that year; and consequently
to Porter, as an influential associate of Chapman and Jonson, must be
given something of the credit of blazing the path toward the comedy
of characteristic. The fun of the play has at once a Chaucerian
shrewdness and a something of the careless guffaw of W. Wager. Its
realism throws back to _Mak_, and _Johan_, _Tom Tyler_ and _Gammer
Gurton_. As a comedy of unadulterated native flavour, breathing rural
life and manners and the modern spirit, constructed with knowledge of
the stage, and without affectation or constraint, it has no foregoing
analogue except perhaps _The Pinner of Wakefield_. No play preceding or
contemporary yields an easier conversational prose, not even the _Merry
Wives_.
We must not close this study without remarking certain resemblances
to Shakespeare. In the matter of situations and language traces of
the _Romeo and Juliet_ of 1592, and the _Midsummer-Night's Dream_ of
1594-1595, appear. The fanciful reader might, indeed, suspect something
like a good-natured burlesque of the balcony scene in the conversation
between Frank and Mall "at her window"; perhaps even of the _motif_ of
Shakespeare's tragedy, in the loves of the children of the inimical
wives of Abington: "How, sir? your wife!" says Mrs. Barnes to Francis:--
"Wouldst thou my daughter have?
Ile rather have her married to her grave."
Even so had spoken Lady Capulet. And Romeo seems to be muttering in his
sleep through Philip's soliloquy:--
"The skie ...
Is in three houres become an Ethiope ...
She will not have one of those pearlèd starres
To blab her sable metamorphosis."
If anything further were needed to illustrate Philip's taste in plays,
it would be furnished by the hazy reminiscence of "the imperial
votaress" and "the nun, for aye ... in shady cloister mewed." Indeed,
if Porter did not have in mind the quadrilateral wanderings of the
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_ when Frank and Mall missed the way to Carfax,
I am much surprised. That Dick Coomes, when he stood between his
mistress and the angel to be tempted, was not thinking of Gobbo, is,
of course, possible, but it is not possible that Dick Coomes's creator
was not familiar with the _Merchant of Venice_. There is also, as I
have already implied, a quality in Dick's sword-and-buckler voice that
rings contemporaneous with the _Henry IV., Pts. I. and II._ To trace a
connection between the well-known lines of _Hamlet_ in 1602 and Porter's
"How loathsome is this beast man's shape to me
This mould of reason so unreasonable"
(1597-98), would, I fear, be fanciful. The resemblance, faint as it is,
may be due to mere coincidence or to derivation from a common source.
=Previous Editions and the Present Text.=--Two editions of this play
were published in 1599: one for Joseph Hunt and William Ferbrand;
the other for Ferbrand alone (in same place of business). From the
variations in spelling and text which characterize the Ferbrand quarto
and are evidently intended for improvements, and from the fact that
Ferbrand was still alone when, in 1600, he published another play,
_Look About You_, I conclude that the edition printed during the period
of partnership was the earlier of the two. It will be indicated in
the notes to the present text as Q 1. Of Q 1 a copy is to be found in
the British Museum (162. d. 55). Of Q 2, published by Ferbrand alone,
there are two copies in the Bodleian, one formerly owned by Malone,
the other by Douce. Q 2 furnishes the more careful text. That it was
made, however, not from manuscript, but from Q 1, is evidenced by the
retention of occasional printers' errors and oddities characteristic
of the earlier edition. Dyce, in his edition (Dy.) for the Percy
Society, 1841, followed Q 1, with occasional readings from Q 2 and
silent emendations. This edition, with modernized spelling, is included
in Hazlitt's _Dodsley_, Vol. VII. (H.). Mr. Havelock Ellis's edition
of the play (E.), with acts, scenes, and modernized spelling, for the
Mermaid Series (_Nero and Other Plays_, 1888), appears to be based
upon H. The present text is that of Q 2 (Bodl. Malone 184), with such
substitutes from Q 1 as are indicated in the footnotes.