Dryden, in the second part of ‘Absalom and Achitophel,’ published in November, described Pordage as Lame Mephibosheth, the wizard's son.He made various translations, wrote poems, and laid claim to two tragedies, Herod and Mariamne (1673), and The Siege of Babylon (1678), and a romance, Eliana.
The plot was borrowed from Josephus and the romance of ‘Cleopatra.’ In 1678 appeared ‘The Siege of Babylon, by Samuel Pordage of Lincoln's Inn, Esq., author of the tragedy of “Herod and Mariamne.”’ This play had been licensed by Roger L'Estrange on 2 November 1677, and acted at the Duke's Theatre not long after the production at the Theatre Royal of Nathaniel Lee's ‘Rival Queens;’ and Statira and Roxana, the ‘rival queens,’ were principal characters in Pordage's rhymed tragedy.
Pordage brought out in 1679 the sixth edition of John Reynolds's ‘Triumphs of God's Revenge against the sin of Murther;’ he prefixed to it a dedication to the Earl of Shaftesbury.
In 1681, at the time when the Popish Plot scare was ebbing out, he wrote a single folio sheet, ‘A new Apparition of Sir Edmundbury Godfrey's Ghost to the E. of D—— in the Tower;’ the printer was obliged to make a public apology for the reflections on the Earl of Danby which it contained.
Between 1681 and 1684 he issued ‘The Remaining Medical Works of … Dr. Thomas Willis … Englished by S. P., Esq.’ There is a general dedication to Sir Theophilus Biddulph, signed by Pordage; and verses ‘On the author's Medico-philosophical Discourses’ precede the first part.