3. Affectionate Shepherds
E. K.'s confutation of "paederastice" did not succeed
in nipping the homosexual pastoral tradition in the bud, but may
well have been more responsible for reviving the tradition than
Spenser's Calender itself. The
immediate effect of his gloss upon English literature was that
William Webbe read it, practically quoted it verbatim, and went
directly to the source and himself translated Virgil's first and
second eclogues. In 1588, two years after Webbe's
Discourse. Abraham Fraunce offered his
own translation of Virgil's second eclogue in The
Lawiers Logike, this time only the seminal
second eclogue, which was accompanied by a complete rhetorical
schema of its contents and structure. This translation was later
republished in The Countesse of Pembrokes
Yvychurch (1591), along with ten elegiac eclogues,
thus reestablishing the connection between the elegiac tradition
and the lover's complaint tradition.
E. K.'s gloss and Webbe's commentary and translation and
Fraunce's works led directly to the rebirth of explicitly
homosexual literature in Richard Barnfield's The
Affectionate Shepherd (1594). Abraham Fraunce was
virtually the mentor of Richard Barnfield, and his pervasive
influence upon the life and literary career of Barnfield has been
admirably documented by Harry Morris in Richard
Barnfield, Colin's Child (1963). The love-gifts
offered by Barnfield's Daphnis to Ganymede include two kidds and
cracknells, probably borrowed from Spenser's
Calender, and poppies and wheatplumbs,
probably borrowed from Fraunce's translation of Virgil's second
eclogue. In his introductory epistle to Cynthia, with
Certayne Sonnets (1595), Barnfield places his
earlier pastoral poem well within the homosexual pastoral
tradition: "Some there were, that did interpret The
affectionate Shepheard, otherwise than (in truth) I meant,
touching the subiect thereof, to wit, the loue of a shepheard to
a boy; a fault, the which I will not excuse, because I neuer
made. Onely this, I will vnshaddow my conceit: being nothing
else, but an imitation of Virgill, in the second Eglogue
of Alexis."
Barnfield's protestations of innocence and mere literary
imitation are belied by the continuation of this homoerotic theme
in the sonnets and by the overt and covert eroticism of the
pastoral itself. The bulk of his work contains some of the most
overt homosexual themes and motifs in Renaissance literature.
Although there is little biographical data concerning Barnfield's
private life, the intensity, apparent sincerity, and frequency with
which this theme is expressed leave little doubt but that he was
homosexual at least at the time he wrote this poetry as a young man. Several
critics have suggested that he was the lover of both Marlowe and
Shakespeare, and even the "rival poet" vying for the
affections of Shakespeare's Master W. H. He might just as easily
have been the lover of any of the writers within the Sidney
circle, particularly Abraham Fraunce.
The Affectionate Shepheard, Containing the Complaint
of Daphnis for the loue of Ganymede (1594) occurs
within the seasonal ritual typical of most pastorals. It begins
symbolically with references to the sun, dawn, spring, and birth,
opening immediately with two stanzas which understandably raised
contemporary eyebrows:
The seasonal ritual takes place within the pastoral sacred
precinct, a pagan-but-holy garden which Barnfield depicts with
even more sensuous details than does Spenser. The poem is
virtually a geographical survey of the estate of a wealthy
shepherd, an impression that supports the legend that Barnfield,
who stopped writing in 1605, retired in luxury to his "grand
manor-house" in Staffordshire, where he died in 1627. No
Alexis was ever offered such a plenitude of love-gifts. Daphnis
offers Ganymede not only Theocritus' and Virgil's simple kids and
chestnuts, but a catalogue of cheese, curds, clotted cream,
strawberries, "Bil-berries in their prime, / Bath'd in a
melting Sugar-Candie streame", "a silken Girdle, and
a drawn-worke Band, / Cuffs for thy wrest, a gold Ring for thy
finger", "A paire of kniues, a greene Hat and a
Feather, / New Gloues", and even a not-very-pastoral
"golden Racket, and a Tennis-ball". In other words, he
offers Ganymede his entire larder "and all I haue
beside" on one condition: "If thou wilt be my Boy, or
els my Bride."
To fill his garden plot he has plundered the herbal manuals,
borrowed from Ophelia's mad speech, and pillaged the flowers of
metamorphosed boy-surrogates: the violet of Attis, the hyacinth
of Hyacinthus, the carnation of Adonis, the rose of
Hermaphroditus. Dapnhis wishes to marry Ganymede and be throned
as king and queen in the sacred arbor. "Clusters of crimson
Grapes Ile pull thee downe: / And with Vine-leaues make thee a
louely Crowne." Dionysus with his Ampelos, Gracchus with his
bugler, a king with his queen (or a queen with his boy), sitting
beside the pool of Hylas: "And by a siluer well (with golden
sands) / Ile sit me downe, and wash thy naked limbs". This
is the narcotic pool of Narcissus, wherein Ganymede, if he would
consent, could be baptized and discover his true identity as the
hermaphroditic boy-surrogate.
Ganymede is the archetypal boy-surrogate. He is favourably
compared to Endymion, Alcinous, Absalom, Adonis, and Narcissus,
as well as to his mythical namesake. He possesses all the
beauties of the formosus puer, lovingly described: long
amber locks, white and red complexion, ivory forehead, naked
arms, delicate wrists, smooth eye-lids, ivory hands, cute
dimples, ruddy cheeks, coral lips, sparkling eyes, and sweet
breath. The poem's "first day's lamentation" neatly
presents the Virgilian-Mantuan-Spenserian love-triangle: Daphnis
is spured by Ganymede, who loves Guendolen. Daphnis professes to
love Ganymede for his spiritual qualities, unlike his rival Queen
Guendolin: "I loue thee for thy gifts, she for hir pleasure;
/ I for thy Vertue, she for Beauties treasure." (Shakespeare
seems to have imitated these lines in his Sonnet 20: "But
since [Nature] pricked thee out for women's pleasure, / Mine be
thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.") But the
original Ganymede was also Zeus' bed-warmer, and Daphnis has an
Olympian ambition. His passion for the lad reaches an intense
eroticism characteristic of Strato or Anacrean:
The option granted to Ganymede to be Daphnis' wasp as well as bee
would suggest a readiness for sodomy. Homoerotic imagery
underlies references throughout the poem to "suck my
Coyne" (a common mercantile metaphor for sperm),
"stones" (testicles), "purses" (scrotum), the
"Robbin-redbrest" (penis), the "beaver who bites
off his testicles", "Pan's owne pipe", and coy
descriptions of Cupid's arrow ("And under Death the amorous
shaft did shiver") and Death's dart ("Aye mee! thy Dart
is blunt, it will not enter!").
"The Second Dayes Lamentation" resolves thwarted desire
into the typical Socratic education. Daphnis advises Ganymede to
be humble, to marry and beget children (as Shakespeare admonishes
W. H.), to obtain a faithful friend, to avoid mean company, and
in general to become a Renaissance gentleman.
Barnfield's personal attitudes are perhaps better revealed by his
sonnets in Cynthia, With Certayne Sonnets, and the
Legend of Cassandra (1595). Moralistic polemic is
easily overcome by emotional sensibilities, notably in Sonnet
III:
This sonnet and two others have been set to music by composer Eric Helmuth for men's chorus, and can be heard on the Web.
But Barnfield also delves more deeply into the relationship of Eros with
Thanatos, into the commingling of the honey of love with the
blood of death. He relates how Ganymede's mythical namesake was
created out of a mixture of pure white snow and a stream of blood
from chaste Diana's foot, pricked by a thorn while on the hunt.
He discusses Achilles' deep wound, healed only by the re-
applciation of the same rusty sword, and upon the folklore
principle that like heals like, he implores Ganymede to
"Kill me with kisses, if thou wilt destroy me." He also
has a curiously morbid-religious dream resembling the eroticism
of mystic ecstasy:
One can easily perceive the great difference between Spenser's
didacticism and Barnfield's eroticism - a difference that can be
attributed to the influence of Christopher Marlowe upon
Barnfield. Certain lines addressed by Barnfield's Daphnis to
Ganymede - such as "If thou wilt come and dwell with me at
home"; "All these and more Ile giue thee for thy
love"; "If thou wilt loue me, thou shalt be my
Boy"; and "If thou wilt be my Boy, or else my
Bride" - are clear echoes of Marlowe's lyric "The
Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and its famous opening
love-invitation:
And we will sit upon the rocks,
And I will make thee beds of roses
A gown made of the finest wool
A belt of straw and ivy buds
The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
In the anonymous play Choice, Chance And Change: Or,
Conceits in their Colours (1606), Arnolfio says
"let vs be merry, and let us live together" to Tidero,
who recognizes the source of the sentiment: "Why how now?
doe you take me for a woman, that you come upon mee with a
ballad, of Come live with me and be my Love?" Similarly, in
Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy (1607),
one male says to another male, "Come live with me and be my
love," and receives the reply, "What, do you think I
am a woman?" In other words, contemporaries were aware of
a homoerotic context for Marlowe's lyric. Marlowe himself, in
The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage
(1594), has Zeus echo the famous line when he offers Ganymede
jewels "if thou wilt be my love."
Go on to 4. The School of Spenser. Go
to Pastoral Bibliography.
CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following form of citation:
The rhetorical argument between pleasure and guilt, joy and sin,
is resolved almost abruptly, as the playful handling of
conventions establish Daphnis as more of a victorious Caesar than
a cursing penitent. Barnfield will later transfer what little
guilt there is upon Ganymede, by implying that Ganymede lacks
sensitivity and perception by failing to appreciate the values
of Daphnis' love - just as Colin lacked charity by failing to
reciprocate Hobbinol's love. The phrasing "If it be sinne
/ Oh then sinne I" is a standard formula which love poets
use to invert values when confronted by a moralizing public.
Sidney used the same technique in the fourteenth stanza of
Astrphel and Stella: "If that be
sinne which doth the maners frame, / . . . / Then Love is sinne,
and let me sinfull be." A reference later in the poem to
Ganymede's body as "sinne-procuring" is a standard
quality attributed to the maidens in the lover's complaint
tradition, and modern readers would err greatly in seeing such
phrases as evidence that Daphnis fits the steroetype of the
guilt-ridden 1950s homosexual. Ganymede scorns Daphnis' love, not
because of any abhorrence of homosexuality, but because
unrequited love is the raison d'etre of the lover's
complaint tradition.
Scarce had the morning Starre hid from the light
Heauens crimson Canoipie with stars bespangled,
But I began to rue th' vnhappy sight
Of that faire Boy tht had my hart intangled;
I came, I saw, I viewd, I slipped in.
(Whose amber locks trust vp in golden tramels
Dangle adowne his louely cheekes with ioy,
When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels)
Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad.
This clever use of Elizabethan puns for sexual intercourse
("fee" and "debt") obviously implies
fellatio. The bee-flower-honey image complex is the homosexual
metaphor par excellence, found throughout Strato's
Muse of Boyhood, and given a modern
metaphysic in the "Bee and Orchid" chapter of Proust's
Cities of the Plain. Ganymede's cup of
ambrosia contains the honey of boys' loins. In classical agrarian
folklore, as in Virgil's Georgics (4.
197-204), it was believed that bees procreated with their mouths.
"Filled may your mouth be with honey" is the standard
greeting between shepherds in Theocritus. The attribution of
honey to the mouths of boys preceded its attribution to the
mouths of females; "honey" as a term of endearment was
originally applied to boys.
Oh would to God he would but pitty mee,
That love him more than any mortall wight;
Then he and I with love would soone agree,
That now cannot abide his sutors sight.
My lips were honey, and they mouth a Bee.
That now is ripe, and full of honey-berries.
Then would I leade thee to my pleasant Bower
Fild full of Grapes, of Mulberries, and Cherries;
I would thy hive, and thou my honey bee.
Barnfield's sensuous imagery is clearly drawn from Marlowe's
portrait of Leander, e.g. "His loue-enticing delicate soft
limbs":
The Stoicks thinke, (and they come neare the truth,)
The Academicks on Idea call.
The Perrepateticks judge felicitie
One man, thinks this; & that conceaves another:
Let Stoicks have their Vertue if they will,
Let cruel Martialists delight in blood,
Is to be gazing on my loves faire eye.
Sometimes I wish that I his pillow were,
So might I steale a kisse, and yet not seene,
So might I gaze upon his sleeping eine,
Although I did it with a panting feare [Sonnet VI].
One night I dream'd (alas twas but a Dreame)
Barnefield's The Complaint of Poetrie, for the Death
of Liberalitie (1598) is perhaps the first
illustration in English literature of a homosexual presenting his
beloved as a woman so he can praise him without causing too many
raised eyebrows. A common difficulty in recognizing homosexual
literature is the necessity an author often feels to disguise his
male lover as his mistress, but here the disguise is paper-thin.
"Poetrie" represents Barnfield, and the female allegory
of "Bountie" represents his former patron Edward Leigh.
The sexual identifications sometimes lapse, as when Barnfield
calls Bountie a "Patron" as well as a
"Nurse", or when he reverses the gender roles
completely and compares himself to Venus weeping for Adonis.
Barnfield likens his situation to that of a husband deprived of
a wife, as well as a man who has lost his faithful friend. Of
particular interest is Barnfield's recitation of the catalogue
of famous friends:
That I did feele the sweetness of the same [that is,
Ganymede's lips],
Where-with inspir'd, I young againe became,
And from my heart a spring of blood did streame.
But when I wak't, I found it nothing so,
Saue that my limbs (me thought) did waxe more strong,
And I more lusty far, & far more yong.
If Pythias death, of Damon were
bewailed;
Though an exercise in sycophancy, the poem is an elegy on the
actual death of a friend - Leigh did in fact die before the
appearance of the 1605 edition.
Of Pillades did rue, Orestes ende:
If Hercules, for Hylas losse were
quailed;
Or Theseus, for Pyrithous Teares did
spend:
When doe I mourne for Bounty, being dead:
Who louing, was my hand, my hart, my head.
Come live with me and be my love,
This poem has a curious history of sexual ambiguity. Most critics
read "to his love" in the sense of "to his
mistress", but there is no conclusive evidence that the
poet's beloved is a female. Gowns, slippers and jeweled clasps
could be worn by men as well as women during the Renaissance
(even in a pastoral), and in fact the men usually outdressed the
women. The "kirtle" is a wrap-around scarf-type garment
worn by men as well as women, usually associated with rustic
culture - indeed Barnfield's Daphnis offers Ganymede "a
silken Girdle." Sir Walter Raleigh in his "Nymph's
Reply" assumes a female persona in order to reply to
Marlowe's swain; Raleigh and Marlowe were members of the all-male
secret society the School of Night, and their two poems may be
an inside joke.
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleyes, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountian yields.
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rives, to whose falls
Melodius birds sing madrigals.
And a thousand fragrant poesies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Imbroid'red all with leaves of myrtle;
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
With coral clasps and amber studs.
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and by my love.
For thy delight each May-morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.
Return to The Homosexual Pastoral Tradition
Rictor Norton, "Affectionate Shepherds",
The Homosexual Pastoral Tradition, 20 June 2008 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/pastor03.htm>.
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