Barnabe Barnes
Barnabe Barnes | |
---|---|
Born | c. 1571 |
Died | 1609 (aged c. 38) |
Nationality | English |
Occupation | poet |
Barnabe Barnes (c. 1571 – 1609) was an English poet. He is known for his Petrarchan love sonnets and for his combative personality, involving feuds with other writers and culminating in an alleged attempted murder.
Early life
The third son of Dr Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham, he was baptised in York at the church of St Michael le Belfry on 6 March 1571. In 1586 he was entered at Brasenose College, Oxford, but did not take his degree. His father died in 1587 leaving two-thirds of his estate to be divided among his six children, and Barnes appears to have been able to live on income from this bequest.[1] In 1591 he went to France with the earl of Essex, who was then serving against the prince of Parma. On his return he published Parthenophil and Parthenophe, Sonnettes, Madrigals, Elegies and Odes (ent. on Stationers' Register 1593), dedicated to his "dearest friend," the poet and nobleman William Percy, who contributed a sonnet to the eulogies prefixed to a later work, Offices. Parthenophil was possibly printed for private circulation, and the copy in the duke of Devonshire's library is believed to be unique.[2]
Sonnets
Barnabe Barnes was well acquainted with the work of contemporary French sonneteers, to whom he is largely indebted, and he borrows his title, apparently, from a
The sequence also has a highly unusual ending: the lover Parthenophil dreams that he uses black magic to compel his unattainable mistress to appear to him naked, whereupon he rapes her. This is such a reversal of Petrarchan convention that it has been interpreted as possibly reflecting contemporary political tensions. John Cox suggests that it is linked to the unfolding conflict between the Earl of Essex and Queen Elizabeth, in which Parthenophe stands for Elizabeth: "Since Parthenophe means virgin Barnes's dream seems unavoidably political, and the stance of frustrated expectation, occasioned by an unyielding and unapproachable female, seems appropriate to one of Essex's party in the early 1590s."[1]
Feuds and attempted murder
Barnes became involved in the pamphlet feud between Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe. Barnes took the part of Harvey, who wanted to impose the Latin rules of quantity on English verse: Barnes even experimented in classical metres himself. This partisanship is sufficient to account for the abuse of Nashe, who accused him, apparently on no proof at all, of stealing a nobleman's chain at Windsor, and of other things.[2] Prior to this literary assault Barnes had written a sonnet for Harvey's anti-Nashe pamphlet Pierces Supererogation (1593), in which he labelled Nashe a confidence trickster, a liar, a viper, a laughing stock and mere "worthless matter" who should be flattered that Harvey even deigned to insult him. Nashe, never slow to pick a fight, took due note: "But my young master Barnaby the Bright, and his kindness (before any desert at all of mine towards him might pluck him on or provoke it), I neither have nor will be unmindful of." He therefore responded in kind in Have with You to Saffron-Walden (1596) with various observations on Barnes: he was a bad poet, he had dreadful dress sense ("getting him a strange pair of Babylonian britches, with a codpiece as big as a Bolognian sausage") and had been a coward on the field of battle during the wars in France. Nashe claimed, not entirely seriously, that Barnes had gone to the general to complain war was dangerous, highly illegal and he wanted to go home at once, and despite six burly captains offering to be his personal bodyguard "home he would, nothing would stay him, to finish Parthenophil and Parthenope and write in praise of Gabriel Harvey."[4]
These charges may well be comic fabrications. It is however on record that Barnes was prosecuted in
Later works
Barnes's second work, A Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnetts, appeared in 1595. He also wrote two plays:
Footnotes
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
- ^ a b c d public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Barnes, Barnabe". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 412. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ "Therein he was very ill-advised, for so the next time his mistress made water, he was in danger to be cast out of her favour." T. Nash, Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 5 vols., 1958, 3
- ^ T. Nash, Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 5 vols., 1958, 3.109
References
- John D. Cox, "Barnes, Barnabe (bap. 1571, d. 1609)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. The first edition of this text is available at Wikisource: Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. .