Henry Porter (died June 1599) was an English dramatist who is known for one surviving play, The Two Angry Women of Abington, and for the manner of his death: he was stabbed by another playwright.
It is a rollicking country piece including two comic characters, Dick Coomes and Nicholas Proverbes, who are advertised in the title page of one original edition.
Henslowe records several payments in 1598 for the book and costumes for the play, but it must have been performed before 1599, as there is a reference to these characters in Plaine Percevall, a pamphlet published that year in response to Martin Marprelate.
In 1598 Porter and Chettle were paid 20 shillings by Henslowe to write a play called The Second Part of Black Batman of the North.
[citation needed] In February 1599 Henslowe acquired the sole rights of any play in which Porter had a hand, in return for a considerable advance of forty shillings.
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".