| Chapter 2: | William Stanley as the Honored Man |
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Chapter 2
William Stanley
as the Honored Man
Promised Future Praise
The internal evidence suggests that Barnfield's dedication of Cynthia to William Stanley had been “announced” less than a year earlier in his Greenes Funeralls. In the latter's Sonnet V, Barnfield promises to honor forever in his future work an unidentified someone—a man who had been friendly to its mourned subject, the late Robert Greene—and in view of the soon-to-appear Cynthia dedication, Stanley is the logical candidate to be this someone. Barnfield's words declaring future commitment are:
[I fear] him alone that is the muses' own
And eke my friend,
And eke my friend,