Richard Barnfield
Richard Barnfield | |
---|---|
Born | 1574 |
Died | 1620 (aged 45–46) |
Nationality | English |
Occupation | poet |
Richard Barnfield (baptized 29 June 1574 – 1620) was an English poet. His obscure though close relationship with William Shakespeare has long made him interesting to scholars. It has been suggested that he was the "rival poet" mentioned in Shakespeare's sonnets.[1]
Early life
Barnfield was born at the home of his maternal grandparents in Norbury, Staffordshire,[2] where he was baptized on 29 June 1574. He was the son of Richard Barnfield, gentleman, and Mary Skrymsher (1552–1581).
He was brought up in Shropshire at The Manor House in Edgmond, his upbringing supervised by his aunt Elizabeth Skrymsher after his mother died when Barnfield was six years old.[2]
In November 1589 Barnfield matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, and took his degree in February 1592. He performed the exercise for his masters gown, but seems to have left the university abruptly, without proceeding to the M.A. It is conjectured that he came up to London in 1593, and became acquainted with Watson, Drayton, and perhaps with Edmund Spenser. The death of Sir Philip Sidney had occurred while Barnfield was still a school-boy, but it seems to have strongly affected his imagination and to have inspired some of his earliest verses.[3]
Publications
In November 1594, in his twenty-first year, Barnfield published anonymously his first work, The Affectionate Shepherd, dedicated with familiar devotion to
Although the poem was successful, it did not pass without censure from the moral point of view because of its openly homosexual content. Two months later, in January 1595, Barnfield published his second volume, Cynthia, with certain Sonnets, and the legend of Cassandra, and this time signed the preface, which was dedicated, in terms which imply close personal relations, to William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. In the preface Barnfield distances himself from the homoeroticism of his previous work, writing that some readers "did interpret The Affectionate Shepherd otherwise than in truth I meant, touching the subject thereof, to wit, the love of a shepherd to a boy". He excuses himself by saying he was imitating Virgil. The new collection, however, also contained poems which were "explicitly and unashamedly homoerotic, full of physical desire", in the words of critics Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson.[4] The book exemplifies the earliest study both of Spenser and Shakespeare. Cynthia itself, a panegyric on Queen Elizabeth, is written in the Spenserian stanza, of which it is probably the earliest example extant outside The Faerie Queene.[3]
In 1598, Barnfield published his third volume, The Encomion of Lady Pecunia, a poem in praise of money, followed by a sort of continuation, in the same six-line stanza, called The Complaint of Poetry for the Death of Liberality. In this volume there is already a decline in poetic quality. But an appendix of Poems in diverse Humours to this volume of 1598 presents some very interesting features. Here appears what seems to be the absolutely earliest praise of Shakespeare in a piece entitled A Remembrance of some English Poets, in which the still unrecognized author of Venus and Adonis is celebrated by the side of Spenser, Daniel and Drayton. Here also are the sonnet, If Music and sweet Poetrie agree, and the ode beginning As it fell upon a day, which were once attributed to Shakespeare himself.[5]
In the next year, 1599, The Passionate Pilgrim was published, with the words "By W. Shakespeare" on the title-page. It was long supposed that this attribution was correct, but Barnfield claimed one of the two pieces just mentioned, not only in 1598, but again in 1605. It is certain that both are his, and possibly other things in The Passionate Pilgrim also; Shakespeare's share in the twenty poems of that miscellany being doubtless confined to the five short pieces which have been definitely identified as his.[3]
He was for a long time neglected, but a less homophobic age has been kinder to his reputation.[6] The sonnet sequence, in particular, can be read as one of the more obviously homoerotic sequences of the period. His work once passed for that of Shakespeare, albeit for only one ode. The Affectionate Shepheard and the Sonnets appeared as limited-edition artist's books in 1998 and 2001, illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and produced by the Old Stile Press.[7][8]
Barnfield's Lady Pecunia and The Complaint of Poetry were used as sample texts by the early 17th-century phonetician Robert Robinson for his invented phonetic script.
Later life
In 1605, his Lady Pecunia was reprinted, and this was his last appearance as a man of letters. Some sources have claimed that Barnfield married and withdrew to his estate of
Notes
- ^ William Shakespeare, Richard Barnfield, and the sixth Earl of Derby. (Brief article) (Book review). " Reference & Research Book News. Book News Inc. 2010. Archived 31 March 2002 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ ISBN 0-903802-37-6.
- ^ a b c d Gosse 1911.
- ^ Paul Edmondson & Stanley Wells, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 18
- ^ Gosse 1885.
- ^ "The Homosexual Pastoral Tradition, part 3". rictornorton.co.uk. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Richard Barnfield, Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Peter Wakelin, The Affectionate Shepheard (Llandogo: Old Stile Press, 1998
- ^ Richard Barnfield and Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Richard Barnfield's Sonnets (Llandogo: Old Stile Press, 2001)
- ^ Massai 2004.
References
- public domain: Gosse, Edmund William (1911). "Barnfield, Richard". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 414–415. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). "Barnfield, Richard". A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gosse, Edmund (1885). "Barnfield, Richard". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- Massai, Sonia (2004). "Barnfield, Richard (bap. 1574, d. 1620)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1487. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
Further reading
- Barnfield, Richard (1990). Klawitter, George (ed.). The Complete Poems. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press. OCLC 330237714.
- Borris, Kenneth; Klawitter, George, eds. (2001). The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press. OCLC 1297707709.
- Bredbeck, Gregory W. (1992). "Tradition and the Individual Sodomite: Barnfield, Shakespeare, and Subjective Desire". In OCLC 864743259.
- Morris, Harry (1959). "Richard Barnfield, "Amyntas," and the Sidney Circle". PMLA. 74 (4): 318–324. JSTOR 460441.
- Morris, Harry (1963). Richard Barnfield, Colin's Child. Tampa: Florida State University. OCLC 318445529.
- Yearling, Rebecca (2013). "Homoerotic Desire and Renaissance Lyric Verse". SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. 53 (1): 53–71. JSTOR 41818883.
External links
- Works by Richard Barnfield at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Richard Barnfield at Internet Archive
- Works by Richard Barnfield at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Songs with lyrics by Richard Barnfield on IMSLP.