The Affectionate Shepherd (Annotated)

Richard Barnfield's The Affectionate Shepherd (1594), subtitled The Complaint of Daphnis for the Love of Ganymede, is an ambitious English pastoral poem shaped by Virgilian convention, Ovidian desire, and the imaginative language of Elizabethan lyric. Through Daphnis's ardent address to the beautiful Ganymede, Barnfield explores longing, jealousy, persuasion, and emotional vulnerability, while all...