WILLIAM BARKSTED.
For biography, cf. ch. xv (Actors), and for his share in The Insatiate Countess, s.v. Marston.
There is no reason to regard him as the ‘William Buckstead, Comedian’, whose name is at the end of a Prologue to a playe to the cuntry people in Bodl. Ashm. MS. 38 (198).
BARNABE BARNES (c. 1569–1609).
Barnes was born in Yorkshire, the son of Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1586, but took no degree, accompanied Essex to France in 1591, and dedicated his poems Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593) to William Percy (q.v.). He was a friend of Gabriel Harvey and abused by Nashe and Campion. In 1598 he was charged with an attempt at poison, but escaped from prison (Athenaeum, 1904, ii. 240). His Poems were edited by A. B. Grosart in Occasional Issues (1875). Hazlitt, Manual, 23, states that a manuscript of a play by him with the title The Battle of Hexham was sold with Isaac Reed’s books in 1807, but this, which some writers call The Battle of Evesham, has not been traced. As Barnes was buried at Durham in Dec. 1609, it is probable that The Madcap ‘written by Barnes’, which Herbert licensed for Prince Charles’s men on 3 May 1624, was by another of the name.
The Devil’s Charter. 2 Feb. 1607
S. R. 1607, Oct. 16 (Buck). ‘The Tragedie of Pope Alexander the Sixt as it was played before his Maiestie.’ John Wright (Arber, iii. 361).
1607. The Divils Charter: A Tragedie Conteining the Life and Death of Pope Alexander the sixt. As it was plaide before the Kings Maiestie, vpon Candlemasse night last: by his Maiesties Seruants. But more exactly reuewed, corrected and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure and profit of the Reader. G. E. for John Wright. [Dedication by Barnabe Barnes to Sir William Herbert and Sir William Pope; Prologue with dumb-show and Epilogue.]
Extracts by A. B. Grosart in Barnes’s Poems (1875), and editions by R. B. McKerrow (1904, Materialien, vi) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.)—Dissertation: A. E. H. Swaen, G. C. Moore Smith, and R. B. McKerrow, Notes on the D. C. by B. B. (1906, M. L. R. i. 122).
DAVID, LORD BARRY (1585–1610).