| Chapter 1: | Barnfield's Ganymede |
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(Berry 34, 43; Thomson 46–48). Stanley's company was soon playing there, and Browne and his troupe also played for the queen at court during these turn-of-the-century years.
The earl even became patron of the newly revived Paul's Boys children's company in or around 1599, in apparent partnership with the young satirist-turned-playwright John Marston. Sir Robert Sidney's informer Rowland Whyte tutted to Sidney that the earl did so “to his great paines and charge,” but the grateful Marston apparently attempted to repay him by bringing his portrait onto the stage (side by side with Marston's own) at the close of the play Marston had written to kick off the company's revival, Antonio and Mellida (Gair 118, 122–123; H. M. C., De L'Isle and Dudley II 415). That the young Marston and the young Barnfield had known each other from their days at Brasenose College has been shown in recent work on Barnfield's biography (Worrall, “Modern-Spelling Edition” 29). One source notes that
His sister-in-law sighed gratefully in a letter that other people took care of one “who would not care for himself” (Whittaker 147).
Sir George Carey, his brother-in-law, was on the whole less charitable, terming Stanley a “nidicock”—that is, a fool and a ninny (Carey 1)—and his whole family seemed to agree.
The rest of the English nobility apparently did not. He was also an intimate friend of Dr. John Dee's (having apparently followed his mother in her longstanding interest in the occult—an interest which we also find in his older brother Ferdinando), and