| Chapter 1: | Barnfield's Ganymede |
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and so forth). The claim, as I note in my biographical sketch of Stanley in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, is, upon consideration of the evidence, without any merit. He did have numerous literary associations, however, and was associated personally with many of the playwrights in London and Lancashire in the period of 1594–1600. William Stanley was—and is—one of the most seemingly eccentric and puzzlingly mysterious of all the major personages in Tudor-Stuart England. His young uncle, the earl of Cumberland, wrote in November, 1596 to Lord Burghley, thanking him “for your care of him who cares not for himself” (Titherley 87). So worried were his young wife and other friends and family over his “prodigall cources” that they took some consolation in the fact that he was wont to fritter away his time “penning plays for the common players” (as Lord Burghley's spy George Fenner put it)—of which he even maintained his own province touring company, Derby's Men—as this activity was at least in their view relatively harmless (Berry 34, 303). Stanley's wife wrote of his request in this regard to her uncle Lord Burghley:
At this time, Stanley seems to have lent his considerable resources to “his man browne” (Robert Browne)—the chief actor and organizational leader of his company, Derby's Men—for Browne's project of turning the Boar's Head Tavern into a playhouse