BARNES, BARNABE (c. 1568-1609), English poet, fourth son of Dr. Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham, was entered in 1586 at Brasenose college, Oxford, where Giovanni Florio was his servitor, and in 1591 went to France with the earl of Essex, who was then serving against the prince of Parma. On his return he published Parthenophil and Parthenophe, Sonnettes, Madrigals, Elegies, and Odes (ent. on Stationers' Register, 1593), dedicated to his "dearest friend," William Percy, who contributed a sonnet to the eulogies prefixed to a later work, Offices. Parthenophil was possibly printed for private circulation, and the copy in the duke of Devonshire's library is believed to be unique. Barnes was well acquainted with the work of contemporary French sonneteers, to whom he is largely indebted, and he borrows his title, apparently, from a Neapolitan writer of Latin verse, Hieronymus Angerianus. Parthenophil abounds in passages of great freshness and beauty, although its elaborate conceits are sometimes over-ingenious and strained. Barnes took the part of Gabriel Harvey and even experi mented in classical metres. He has been claimed by some scholars as the "rival poet" of Shakespeare's sonnets, and even as the author of some of them.
Other works by Barnes are: A Divine Centurie of Spirituall Son netts 0595) ; two plays: The Divil's Charter (1607), and The Battle of Evesham (or Hexham) , now lost; and a prose treatise, Offices enabling privat Persons for the speciall service of all good Princes and Policies (1606). His Parthenophil and Spirituall Sonnetts were edited by Dr. A. B. Grosart in a limited issue in ; Parthenophil was included by Prof. E. Arber in vol. v. of An English Garner; see also the new edition of An English Garner (Elizabethan Sonnets, ed. S. Lee, 1904, pp. lxxv. et seq.). Prof. E. Dowden contributed a sympathetic criticism of Barnes to The Academy of Sept. 2, 1876.