Queen
Mary was also favorable and he became head-master of Westminster
School.[84]
An Elizabethan lyrical poet of high quality, whose work has had the honor
of being confused with Shakespeare's, Richard Barnfield, appears to have
possessed the temperament, at least, of the invert. His poems to male
friends are of so impassioned a character that they aroused the protests
of a very tolerant age. Very little is known of Barnfield's life. Born in
1574 he published his first poem, _The Affectionate Shepherd_, at the age
of 20, while still at the University. It was issued anonymously, revealed
much fresh poetic feeling and literary skill, and is addressed to a youth
of whom the poet declares:--
"If it be sin to love a lovely lad,
Oh then sin I."
In his subsequent volume, _Cynthia_ (1595), Barnfield disclaims any
intention in the earlier poem beyond that of imitating Virgil's second
eclogue. But the sonnets in this second volume are even more definitely
homosexual than the earlier poem, though he goes on to tell how at last he
found a lass whose beauty surpassed that
"of the swain
Whom I never could obtain.
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