The Two Angry Women of Abingdon/Introduction
The
Two Angry Women of Abingdon,
BY
HENRY PORTER.
1599
From "Henslowe's Diary" and other sources, it would appear that Porter wrote several plays. The only one extant is "The Two Angry Women of Abingdon," now facsimiled from a copy of the earliest known edition in the British Museum. Another impression was issued the same year: of this there is one perfect example in the British Museum (Press-mark 162, d. 55) and two copies in the Bodleian.
The second of these was reprinted by Dyce in 1841 for the Percy Society; the first was used by Professor Gayley of the University of California as the basis of his text of the play in "Representative English Comedies" (1903). Dr. Gayley's "introduction" is the most important study of Porter that has yet appeared; no student can afford to neglect this critical essay, embracing as it does, all the discovered facts of Porter's life, a conjectural attempt at the identity of the man, his place in the dramatic activities of his day, together with a discussion of the vexed question of the lost parts of the Abingdon triad.
Mr. J. A. Herbert, of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, after comparing this facsimile with the original copy, says that "it is for the most part excellent: slightly too heavily printed pages are B 1 verso, B 2 recto, B 4 recto, and C 2 recto."