English poet Richard Barnfield was BOTD in 1574. Born in Norbury, Staffordshire his father was a gentleman, and he was brought up in Shropshire. He studied at Oxford University, before moving to London, where he befriended Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare. In 1594, he anonymously published the poem The Affectionate Shepherd, focusing on the love of the shepherd Daphnis for Ganymede, the beautiful young male cup-bearer to the Gods. “If it be a sin to love a lovely lad,” Daphnis opined, “Oh, then sin I”. The poem’s explicitly homosexual content made it both a success and scandal. His 1595 sonnet collection Cynthia, with certain Sonnets, and the legend of Cassandra also featured homoerotic themes. His detailed depictions of unrequited desire (“Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell/Where pleasure, pain and sad repentance dwell“) have been compared to Shakespeare’s love sonnets composed to a young man. Cynthia was dedicated to Barnfield’s patron William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, leading to biographical conjecture that the two may have been lovers. Barnfield’s later works were less successful, though his 1598 monograph about English poets features early praise for Shakespeare. Historians and academics have long debated the nature of Barnfield and Shakespeare’s friendship. Barnfield himself appears to have been cynical about the limitations of friendship, writing in An Ode “Every one that flatters thee is no friend in misery. Words are easy, like the wind, Faithful friends are hard to find.” He has also been proposed as the “rival poet” mentioned in Shakespeare’s sonnets. Little is known about his later life or relationships, and no authenticated portraits of him exist. He is thought to have died in 1620, aged 45.