Thomas Lodge, in his "Alarum against Usurers," 1584, speaks of his "birth," and of "the offspring from whence he came," as if he were at least respectably descended; and on the authority of Anthony Wood, it has been asserted by all subsequent biographers that he was of a Lincolnshire family. [The fact is, that Lodge was the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1584, by his wife, the daughter of Sir William Laxton.] Thomas Salter, about the year 1580, dedicated his "Mirror of Modesty" to [the poet's mother, Lady Anne Lodge].

Langbaine seems to be under a mistake when he states that Lodge was of Cambridge. Wood claims him for the University of Oxford,[90] where he traces him as early as 1573, when he must have been about seventeen years old, if he were born, as is generally supposed, in 1556. We are told by himself that he was a Servitor of Trinity College, and that he was educated under Sir Edward Hoby. At what time and for what cause Lodge left Oxford is not known; but Stephen Gosson, in the dedication of his "Plays Confuted in Five Actions," printed about 1582,[91] accuses him of having become "a vagrant person, visited by the heavy hand of God," as if he had taken to the stage, and thereby had incurred the vengeance of heaven. In 1584, when Lodge answered Gosson, he was a student of Lincoln's Inn;[92] and to "his courteous friends, the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court," he dedicated his "Alarum against Usurers." He afterwards, as he informs Lord Hunsdon, in the epistle before his "Rosalynde," 1590, "fell from books to arms;" and he calls it "the work of a soldier and a scholar," adding that he had sailed with Captain Clarke to the islands of Terceras and the Canaries. In 1596, he published his "Margarite of America," and he mentions that it was written in the Straits of Magellan, on a voyage with Cavendish. To this species of vagrancy, however, Gosson did not refer.

That Lodge was vagrant in his pursuits we have sufficient evidence; for, after having perhaps been upon the stage, having entered himself at Lincoln's Inn, having become a soldier, and having sailed with Clarke and Cavendish, he went, according to Wood, to study medicine at Avignon.[93] This change, if it took place at all, which may admit of doubt,[94] did not occur until after 1596. In 1595 his "Fig for Momus" appeared. Besides Satires, it contains Epistles and Eclogues; and in one of the latter Lodge speaks in his own person, under the character of "Golde" (the same letters that compose his name), and there states his determination no longer to pursue ill-rewarded poetry—

"Which sound rewards, since this neglected time,
Repines to yield to men of high desert,
I'll cease to ravel out my wits in rhyme,
For such who make so base account of art;
And since by wit there is no means to climb,
I'll hold the plough awhile, and ply the cart;
And if my muse to wonted course return,
I'll write and judge, peruse, commend and burn."

The dedication of his "Wit's Misery, and the World's Madness," is dated "from my house, at Low Layton, 5th November 1596."

The principal reasons for supposing that Lodge studied medicine are the existence of a "Treatise of the Plague," published by "Thomas Lodge, Doctor in Physic," in 1603, and of a collection of medical recipes in MS., called "The Poor Man's Legacy," addressed to the Countess of Arundel, and sold among the books of the Duke of Norfolk.[95] [There can be little or no question that the physician and poet were one and the same. In "England's Parnassus," 1600, he is called indifferently Thomas Lodge and Doctor Lodge.] The author of the "Treatise of the Plague" expressly tells the Lord Mayor of London, in the dedication, that he was "bred and brought up" in the city. Thomas Heywood, in his "Troja Britannica," 1609, enumerates the celebrated physicians then living—

"As famous Butler, Pedy, Turner, Poe,
Atkinson, Lyster, Lodge, who still survive."—C. 3.

It hardly deserves remark that Lodge is placed last in this list; but had he been the same individual who had written for the stage, was the friend of so many dramatists, and was so well known as a lyric poet, it seems likely that Heywood would have said more about him.[96] It is a singular coincidence, that having written how to prevent and cure the plague, he should die of that disease during the great mortality of 1625. Wood's expressions on this point, however, are not decisive: "He made his last exit (of the plague, I think) in September 1625, leaving then behind him a widow called Joan." It has been conjectured [rather foolishly] that he was a Roman Catholic, from a statement made by one of his biographers that, while he practised medicine in London, he was much patronised by persons of that persuasion.

There are but two existing dramatic productions on the title-pages of which the name of Lodge is found:[97] the one he wrote alone, and the other in partnership with Robert Greene:—

(1.) The Wounds of Civill War. Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla, &c. Written by Thomas Lodge, Gent. 1594, 4to.

(2.) A Looking Glasse for London and Englande. Made by Thomas Lodge, Gentleman, and Robert Greene, in Artibus Magister. 1594, 1598, 1602, 1617, all in 4to.[98]

The most remarkable [of his works], and that which has been most often reprinted, is his "Rosalynde" which, as is well known, Shakespeare closely followed in "As You Like It."[99]

Anterior to the date of any of his other pieces must have been Lodge's defence of stage-plays, because Stephen Gosson replied to it about 1582. It was long thought, on the authority of Prynne, that Lodge's tract was called "The Play of Plays," but Mr Malone ascertained that to be a different production. The only copy of Lodge's pamphlet seen by Mr Malone was without a title, and it was probably the same that was sold among the books of Topham Beauclerc in 1781. It is spoken of in "The French Academy" [1589] as having "lately passed the press;" but Lodge himself, in his "Alarum against Usurers," very clearly accounts for its extreme rarity: he says, "by reason of the slenderness of the subject (because it was in defence of plaies and play-makers) the godly and reverent that had to deal in the cause, misliking it, forbad the publishing;" and he charges Gosson with "comming by a private unperfect coppye," on which he framed his answer, entitled, "Plays confuted in Five Actions."

Mr Malone ("Shakespeare," by Boswell, ii. 250) contends that Spenser alludes to Lodge, in his "Tears of the Muses," under the name of Alcon, in the following lines:—

"And there is pleasing Alcon, could he raise
His tunes from lays to matters of more skill;"

and he adds that Spenser calls Lodge Alcon, from one of the characters in "A Looking Glasse for London and Englande;" but this argument would apply just as much to Lodge's coadjutor Greene. Mr Malone further argues that Lodge, roused by this applause (which he repaid in his "Phillis"), produced not long afterwards a "matter of more skill," in "The Wounds of Civil War."