The affectionate shepheard: earliest printed allusion to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis

Richard Barnfield’s description of “earth-delving conies” in The Affectionate Shepheard is most likely an early allusion to the “earth-delving conies” in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (1593), line 687 in modern editions.

The Shakspere Allusion-Book lists other possible similarities, including the following passages:

Shakespeare:

For misery is trodden on by many,
And being low never relieved by any.

Barnfield:

Humility is misery relieu’d,
But Pride in neede of no man is regarded;

Barnfield also echoes a line from Lucrece:

Shakespeare:

But Beautie in that white entituled,
From Venus doues doth challenge that faire field...

Barnfield:

Oh foule Eclipser of that fayre sun-shine,
Which is intituled Beauty in the best;

It is hard to say whether these verbal similarities were deliberate or the result of a poetic culture that valued imitatio and the use of common images and tropes. Nevertheless, the similarities here and in Barnfield’s later Cynthia, the homoeroticism of much of Barnfield’s verse, and Barnfield’s praise for Shakespeare in “A Remembrance of Some English Poets” has led some scholars to propose that Barnfield might be the so-called “Rival Poet” of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Two copies of The Affectionate Shepheard are known to survive: one in the British Library and another at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The Folger copy, purchased by Mr. Folger himself, is the one shown here.