Thomas Lodge

Thomas Lodge 1558?-1625, English writer, grad. Oxford, 1577. After abandoning the study of law for literature, he published (c.1580) his defense of poetry and other arts, usually called Honest Excuses, in reply to the attacks made by Stephen Gosson in The School of Abuse. Lodge wrote in nearly every form of literature. His pamphlets include Alarm against Usurers (1584) and Wits Misery and World's Madness (1596). He wrote several euphuistic romances, the best of which are Scillaes Metamorphosis (1589), a source of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis; Rosalynde (1590), Shakespeare's source for As You Like It; and A Margarite of America (1596). Phillis (1593), a collection of amorous sonnets, is his chief volume of verse. He also wrote plays and a book of verse satires, A Fig for Momus (1595). Lodge pursued several careers in addition to his literary efforts. He sailed on a few expeditions, the most notable being the Thomas Cavendish expedition to South America in 1591. He received a medical degree from Avignon in 1598 and another from Oxford in 1603. He wrote very little original work during his later life, devoting himself primarily to translating and to the practice of medicine.

Bibliography: See his complete works ed. by E. W. Gosse (1883, repr. 1966); biography by P. M. Ryan, Jr. (1958); studies by C. J. Sisson (1933, repr. 1966) and E. A. Tenney (1935, repr. 1969).

Lodge, Thomas (1558–1625) was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and was a student of Lincoln's Inn in 1578. In 1579–80 he published an anonymous Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays, a reply to Gosson's Schoole of Abuse, and in 1584 An Alarum against Usurers (dedicated to Sir P. Sidney) to which was appended a prose romance, Forbonius and Prisceria. Scillaes Metamorphosis, an Ovidian verse fable, was published in 1589. On a voyage to Terceras he wrote his best-known romance, Rosalynde (1590). After four more minor prose romances he published Phillis: Honoured with Pastorall Sonnets, Elegies, and Amorous Delights (1593), to which was appended ‘The Complaynt of Elstred’. His play The Wounds of Civill War (1594) had been performed by the Lord Admiral's Men; he also wrote A Looking Glasse for London and England (1594, with R. Greene). It is not clear whether he wrote any other plays.

A Fig for Momus (1595) was a miscellaneous collection of satirical poems including epistles addressed to S. Daniel and M. Drayton. Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madnesse: Discovering the Devils Incarnat of this Age (1596) was a remarkable romance; A Margarite of America was written near the Magellan Straits during his voyage under Thomas Cavendish. Lodge then became a Roman Catholic, studied medicine at Avignon, and was incorporated MD at Oxford in 1602. He published A Treatise of the Plague 1603, and completed two major works of translation: The Famous and Memorable Workes of Josephus (1602) and The Workes of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (1614). Lodge is now mainly remembered for Rosalynde and for the lyrics scattered throughout his romances.