‘He queered the hell out of it’: the man behind

Shakespeare was inspired by the homoerotic poetry of Richard Barnfield – so why has it taken so long to acknowledge the connection between them?

The year 1594 was a fruity one in English literature, in part thanks to the influence from beyond the grave of Christopher Marlowe. Two of the dramatist’s most queerly themed plays made it into print that year: Edward II, about the medieval king’s passionate desire for his favourite Piers Gaveston; and Dido, Queen of Carthage, a dramatisation of the Aeneid that opened with a remarkable scene of erotic foreplay between Jupiter and his sexual plaything, Ganymede.

Yet even Marlowe’s vivid homoeroticism paled in comparison with the work of a very young and bold new poet who arrived on the scene that autumn. Richard Barnfield was just 20, recently down from Oxford, and ready to put to use an adolescence spent reading as much queer classical and vernacular literature as he could get his hands on.

O would to God, so I might have my fee,
My lips were honey, and thy mouth a bee
Then should’st thou sucke my sweete and my faire flower,
That now is ripe and full of honey-berries