A Still Queer Voice: Richard Barnfield's "The Affectionate Shepherd"

This week on the poddie, we discuss a lesser known -- but by no means a lesser quality -- Elizabethan pastoral by Richard Barnfield called "The Affectionate Shepherd."  In sophisticated, learned verse, Barnfield highlights the homoerotic elements (not always so) latent in classical and early modern bucolics, which I think a heroic feat in for a 16th century writer.

Transcript

Hello once again, everyone.  Come in, have a seat, pour yourself some tea.  There’s biscuits on the table.  Welcome back to the Classic English Literature Podcast, where rhyme gets its reason.  Don’t forget to like, subscribe to, and review the podcast – it’s the best way to get more folks here to the clubhouse.  If you’d like to enjoy a warm fuzzy feeling, click the support the show button: warmth and fuzziness will flow.

Couple of quick recognitions: thank you very much to Jessica from Italy for your lovely email – your thoughts are very encouraging and most appreciated.  Similarly, my gratitude to Jake, from Mississippi, I believe (forgive me if I’m wrong) for your very kind thoughts in the TikTok comments.

OK – pop quiz! Have you a number 2 pencil ready?  Then we'll begin: who is the only male English poet of the Tudor era, other than William Shakespeare, to address a love poem to a man?  Answer now.

Pencils down.  We'll check your work momentarily. 

I’ve conceived of this whole podcast as a way of introducing folks to the classic, transformative texts of English literature.  I try to point out relevant historical and philosophical points and offer my own sometimes desultory thoughts.  And because this poddie is an introduction for a general audience, I’ve necessarily hewed towards what has been called the “canon” – that mythical list of poems, plays, and novels that make up, as critic and poet Matthew Arnold famously declared, “the best which has been thought and said.”  You may know that canonicity is an issue rife with conflict and controversy, and I find myself simultaneously on both sides, though I must admit I do lean toward the traditional.  That’s why this show is a bit like those greatest hits collections that those of us of a certain age used to buy at record stores: a sampling of a band or singer’s best known songs, usually marketed to the casual fan.  But record companies also frequently included two or three new songs or rare songs to convince the die-hard fan to spend a few bucks on a product she mostly already owns.  Sly villains!  

Anyway, today I think I’ve got one of those metaphorical rare songs for you.  When last we spoke, we concentrated on Christopher Marlowe’s and Walter Ralegh’s pastoral eclogues.  Now these are certainly among the greatest hits of English lit – they’ll show up in just about every survey course you might take.  But while reading up for that episode, I came across another quite interesting pastoral eclogue (ish) poem by Richard Barnfield called “The Affectionate Shepherd” that I think counts as a deep cut.  It’s from 1594, probably, so slightly ahead of its more famous peers.  We don’t know much about Barnfield, except that he did most of his writing before he turned 25, then fell silent until his death at 52.  Country gent, father, and husband.  C’est tout.

Couple of interesting bits of trivia, though.  “The Affectionate Shepherd” is dedicated to the Lady Penelope Rich.  Now, if that name tinkles a distant and meek bell, it’s because she inspired Sir Philip Sidney’s Stella.  Another interesting feature is that the poem includes, after a fashion, its own response – there is a “Day One” part and a “Day Two” part.  More on that later.  Thirdly, the poem is forthrightly homoerotic – there is absolutely no ambiguity about the gay nature of the speaker’s love.  Such frankness is quite rare in 16th century poetry.  Certainly, we see hints and glimpses of queerness in many works, but there’s always just enough plausible deniability.  Barnfield’s work is very open, but complicated.  More on that momentarily.

The poem presents a meditation by the shepherd Daphnis, lamenting the complete disregard by the object of his love, the young man Ganymede.  It’s worth briefly sketching the meanings implied by the names.  Daphnis, in Greek mythology, was the mortal son of Hermes, the divine herald of the gods, and the putative inventor of pastoral poetry.  By the Renaissance, his name became a byword for the lovelorn shepherd in the verse of his invention.  Ganymede was a Trojan, the most beautiful of mortals, who was abducted by Zeus to become the sky god’s cupbearer and, um, companion.

In Barnfield’s poem, Ganymede is besotted with a woman named Guendolen and so rejects the advances and affection of Daphnis.  This, of course, gives Daphnis the mopes, for Ganymede is seriously beautiful: 

His ivory-white and alabaster skin

Is stained throughout with rare vermilion red,

Whose twinkling starry lights do never blin

To shine on lovely Venus, beauty's bed;

But as the lily and the blushing rose,

So white and red on him in order grows.

The bulk of Day 1’s discourse rehearses the rather typical lament of the forsaken shepherd: Daphnis would treat Ganymede like royalty, would give him everything he could desire: amber bracelets, pearl crownets, charming kisses, his body as a bed, eglantine arbors, and so on and so on.  Daphnis would strew his love’s path with the treasures of Flora, the goddess of spring, and elaborates a extended honeybee metaphor for his fantasy:

O would to God (so I might have my fee)

My lips were honey, and thy mouth a bee.

Then shouldst thou suck my sweet and my fair flower

That now is ripe and full of honey-berries;

Then would I lead thee to my pleasant bower

Filled full of grapes, of mulberries, and cherries;

Then shouldst thou be my wasp or else my bee,

I would thy hive, and thou my honey be.

Nice little pun on the homonyms “bee” as in the pollinating insect and “be” as in existence.  The metaphor recurs with a some bitter frustration later:

but like the honey bees

Thou suck'st the flower till all the sweet be gone,

And lov'st me for my coin till I have none.

Seems a bit catty to accuse the guy of being a gigolo, but there you are.  Still and all, Daphnis offers to take the lad fishing (with a pun, I imagine, on rod, hook, and line), would play sweet music on his oaten pipes, would give him fruit (apples and cherries feature prominently).  But alas, all this fails.  By the end of day 1, Daphnis shifts his argument from the giving of gifts and the bursting, lush, and fertile imagery to an emotionally deeper plaint.  Longish quote:

Compare the love of fair Queen Guendolin

With mine, and thou shalt see how she doth love thee:

I love thee for thy qualities divine,

But she doth love another swaine above thee:

I love thee for thy gifts, she for her pleasure;

I for thy virtue, she for beauty's treasure.

And always, I am sure, it cannot last.

But sometime Nature will deny those dimples:

Instead of beautie, when thy blossom's past,

Thy face will be deformed full of wrinkles;

Then she that lov'd thee for thy beauties sake,

When age draws on, thy love will soone forsake.

But that I lov'd thee for thy gifts divine,

In the December of thy beauties waning,

Will still admire with joy those lovely eine,

That now behold me with their beauties baning.

Though Januarie will never come again,

Yet Aprill yeres will come in showers of rain.

Here we get that theme of mutability creeping in again.  You will not always be beautiful – it will not always be the springtime of your life – and I will still love you in the autumn and winter.  Guendolen will not, for 

though she be faire,

Yet is she light; not light in vertue shining,

But light in her behavior, to impair

Her honor in her chastities declining.

The argument does not convince Ganymede.

To this point, Barnfield has done yeoman’s work in his homage to Virgil.  The Roman’s eclogues, as we have before mentioned, were the primary model for Renaissance pastoral, and Barnfield here does kind of a remix of Virgil’s Eclogue 2.  In that poem, the shepherd Corydon burns for the handsome Alexis, offers gifts: rich flocks and abundant milk, and warns of time’s passage: the blackberries are harvested, he says.  Virgil concludes the poem with Corydon chastising himself for his foolishness:

Ah! Corydon, Corydon, what hath crazed your wit?

Your vine half-pruned hangs on the leafy elm;

Why haste you not to weave what need requires

Of pliant rush or osier? Scorned by this,

Elsewhere some new Alexis you will find.

Corydon recognizes his excessive passion, notes that the passing of time affects himself as well, and decides to find another lad to love.  Sensible perhaps, but depending on how sincere you feel Corydon is here, it could be seen to undercut his aforementioned pleas.

Now, Virgil based his eclogue 2 on the Greek Theocritus’ poem Idyll 11, written perhaps two and a half centuries earlier in about 300 BCE.  The Greek poem begins with a framing device in which Theocritus counsels his rejected and dejected friend Nicias, telling of the Cyclops Polyphemus (yes, he of Odyssey fame) who pined for the nymph Galatea.  Here we have an unrequited heterosexual desire, which Virgil alters and Barnfield preserves.  But Polyphemus offers gifts to compensate for his ugliness, which neither Virgil nor Barnfield include, though perhaps the relative age gap between the non-lovers may be a version.  Polyphemus says:

Delightful girl, I know why you run away.

My looks are frightening. I know it’s true,

One long shaggy eyebrow runs from ear to ear

With one huge eye below. My nose is flat

And wide. Yet, as I am, I keep a thousand head

Of cattle, and from them I fill a vat

Of the best milk to drink. All year round

I never run out of cheese, not even in

The coldest winter. My baskets are always full.

And he, too, chastises his foolishness at the end, saying

Cyclops, Cyclops, have you lost your mind?

Go weave your baskets, go and milk the ewe

That’s here, don’t chase the one that runs away.

Figure out the sensible thing to do, 

And do it. That’s always the best way.

You’ll find another Galatea, maybe,

A prettier one. 

Bit of sour grapes here, I think, not a good look, but then he’s also a murderer and maneater, so he has other priorities if he ever begins to work on himself.  But he’s a lovely musician, so there’s that.

Anyway, the point I’m making is that, with some minor deviations and emendations, Barnfield’s “The Affectionate Shepherd” is a fairly faithful entry in the body of pastoral eclogues – he’s done a good job imitating the masters, as any journeyman should do on his way to becoming a master himself.  But while Theocritus and Virgil end on the “sour grapes” note, while having the speakers literally question their own sanity, Barnfield has his shepherd simply say: “Oh happy I, if I had loved never!”  And that’s a big change, actually, because while Polyphemus and Corydon decide to wait for the next bus, Daphnis begins to consider what happiness consists of.  Barnfield doesn’t end his eclogue there, as his antecedents do: he gives us the day after.

Well, the day after, sort of.  The title of the second part of the poem is “The Second Day’s Lamentation.”  Whether we are talking literally the morning after the night before or whether this is some second noncontiguous day in an undefined future is a bit unclear.  Daphnis does seem older, but that could be the actual passage of time and aging or it could be a literary conceit to emphasize the increased maturity and wisdom evident in part two.  He considers the weaknesses and superficiality of his previous arguments, he considers how matters of vice and virtue went unattended in his passion.  We hear from a more reflective Daphnis here – not quite stoic, but sober.  He asks, “But why do I of such great follies dream?”  No sour grapes here, not an accusation against Ganymede so much as a recognition of his own shortsightedness.  And just a lovely line rhythmically, don’t you agree?

Based on this recognition, Daphnis seeks to mentor young Ganymede, to offer him virtuous guidance.  He proffers the examples of Absolon and Priamus against vainglory and the “gentlewomen of this age” who flaunt their beauty.  He warns against the pitfalls of pride, indulgence, and mischance that come with loving foolishly.  He warns against simple binary, either/or thinking, noting that 

Virtue and Gravity are sisters grown,

Since black by both, and both by black are known.

White is the colour of each paltry Miller,

White is the Ensign of each common Woman;

White, is white Virtues for black Vices Pillar;

White makes proud fools inferior unto no man:

White, is the white of Body, black of Mind,

(Virtue we seldom in white Habit find.)

Do not be deceived by appearances or performances, do not be haughty of your own beauty: often virtue can promote vice by hiding its true essence.  Then we get the generic Dad advice:

Apply thy mind to be a virtuous man;

Avoid ill company, the spoil of youth;

To follow virtue’s lore do what thou can,

Whereby great profit unto the ensuth:

Read books, hate ignorance, the foe to art,

The dame of error, envy of the heart.

This Polonius-type instruction continues for 14 stanzas.  And while, since it’s an eclogue, in the dramatic situation of the poem it is certainly directed at a callow Ganymede, we clearly see that Daphnis has grown increasingly self-aware and takes this occasion not only to shape the character of one he loves, but also to remind himself of the character he should cultivate himself.  

Richard Barnfield is the only Elizabethan English poet besides Shakespeare to address a love poem to another man. Did you answer correctly?  Good.  What poem did Shakespeare address to a man?  Most of his sonnets.  And, by the by, there are those who believe Barnfield to be the Rival Poet figure of those sonnets.

Anyway, it seems whenever people learn about something like this, they immediately want to know: was Barnfield gay?  The fact that the poem is about shepherds never prompts the question: was Barnfield proficient in animal husbandry?  The honeybee metaphor never sparks inquiries into Barnfield’s apicultural proclivities. 

But was he gay? The short answer: don’t know.  The longer answer: we really don’t know.  Traditional 20th century critical practices warn against conflating the author of a text with that text’s speaker or persona.  And our persistent tendency to do so anyway stems from a conception of the author developed by 19th century Romantics, so there are both hermeneutical and anachronistic problems here.  Barnfield was married to a woman and had children, but of course that does not preclude a queer identity.  But the matter of identity itself is troublesome, too.  In the early modern world – indeed, perhaps even into the mid 20th century – sexuality was not considered an identity marker: one was not gay, one participated in gay sex.  It was an action, an activity, not a state of being.  This, of course, implies choice and that led to the conclusion that nonheterosexual sex was perversion, which has led, in turn, to a great deal of bigotry and suffering. So questions of queer identity in earlier epochs are fraught with ontological and epistemological complexity. 

While cosmopolitan readers would have understood the same-sex love conventions of such pastorals, Barnfield’s candid poem did scandalize many and he was forced to defend the poem’s forthright homosexuality by claiming that he was merely demonstrating a fidelity to the Virgilian original and that readers “did interpret The Affectionate Shepherd otherwise than in truth I meant.”  Maybe that’s true, but it’s also exactly the type of thing one would say in a country which passed the Buggery Act of 1533, which made gay sex punishable by death.

Personally, I find it difficult to believe that Barnfield’s poem and its direct focus on male-male love is merely an exercise in imitation.  He chose to maintain Virgil's alteration to Theocritus's original. If we cannot with any certainty determine Richard Barnfield’s membership in the queer community, we can certainly read his poem as a voice speaking of queer experience from a world distant in time and tolerance. He presents such love only as love – in a way unremarkable except for its power. If nothing else, The Affectionate Shepherd presents love as a dominating and sometimes debilitating force, regardless of who is loving whom.  In its presentation of Daphnis's ardor, disappointment, and reconciliation we see folly and dignity.  That we all have loved and been unloved, too, means that Daphnis's folly and dignity is our own.  

Thanks for listening.  If you’ve enjoyed your time in the Clubhouse, please leave a positive review on your streaming platform of choice.  Keep up with the show on the various social media apps and drop me a line at classicenglishliterture@gmail.com.  I look forward to hearing from you!