When he performed in Epicene he was of the company "provided and kept" by Kirkham, Hawkins, Kendall, and Payne, and in Jonson's folio of 1616 he is associated with "Nat.
Certain documents (a bond and articles of agreement in connection with Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn) introduce Barksted's name in 1611 and 1615–16, as belonging to this company of actors referred.
In some copies also of the Insatiate Countess, dated 1631, the name of John Marston is displaced by that of William Barksted.
The Countess of Derby is addressed as "Your honor's from youth oblig'd".’ Barksted was the author of the poems Mirrha, the Mother of Adonis; or Lustes Prodegies (1607); and Hiren, or the Faire Greeke (1611).
Barksted has been identified by some with W. B., the author of a rough verse-translation of a "Satire of Juvenal", entitled That which seems Best is Worst, exprest in a paraphrastical transcript of Iuvenal's tenth Satyre.