Thomas Lodge

Thomas Lodge (?1558-1625), Phillis, 1593. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Dr. Thomas Lodge (?1558 - September 1625) was an English poet and dramatist.

Life

Overview

Lodge, son of Sir Thomas Lodge, lord mayor of London, was educated at Merchant Taylor's School and Oxford. He was a student of Lincoln's Inn, but abandoned law for literature, ultimately studied medicine, and earned an M.D. at Oxford 1603; having become a Roman Catholic, he had a large practice, chiefly among his co-religionists. In 1580 he published A Defence of Plays in reply to Gosson's School of Abuse; and he wrote poems, dramas, and romances. His principal dramatic works are The Wounds of Civil War, and (in conjunction with Greene) A Looking-glass for London and England. Among his romances may be mentioned Euphues' Shadow, Forbonius and Prisceria (1584), and Rosalynde, Euphues' golden legacie (1590). His poems include Glaucus and Scilia (1589), Phillis: Honoured with pastoral sonnets, elegies, and amorous delights (1593). Rosalynde, his best known work, and the source from which Shakespeare is said to have drawn As You Like It, was written to beguile the tedium of a voyage to the Canaries. Robin the Divell and William Longbeard are historical romances. Lodge was also a voluminous translator. He was a founder of the regular English drama, but his own plays are heavy and tedious. His romances, popular in their day, are sentimental and over-refined in language, but are enlivened by lyrical pieces in which he is far more successful than in his dramatic work.

Youth and education

Lodge was born about 1558 at West Ham. He was the second son of Sir Thomas Lodge, who was lord mayor of London in 1562-1563. He was educated at Merchant Taylors School and Trinity College, Oxford, earning a B.A. degree in 1577 and that of M.A. in 1581.

In 1578 he entered Lincoln's Inn, where, as in the other Inns of Court, a love of letters and a crop of debts and difficulties were alike wont to spring up in'a kindly soil. Lodge, apparently in disregard of the wishes of his family, speedily showed his inclination towards the looser ways of life and the lighter aspects of literature.

Writer and sailor

When the penitent Stephen Gosson had (in 1579) published his Schoole of Abuse, Lodge took up the glove in his Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays (1579 or 1580; reprinted for the Shakespeare Society, 1853), which shows a certain restraint, though neither deficient in force of invective nor backward in display of erudition. The pamphlet was prohibited, but appears to have been circulated privately. It was answered by Gosson in his Playes Confuted in Five Actions; and Lodge retorted with his Alarum Against Usurers (1584, reprinted ib.)-a “ tract for the times ” which no doubt was in some measure indebted to the author's personal experience.

Also in 1584 he produced the earliest tales written by him on his own account in prose and verse, The Delectable History of Forbonius and Prisceria, both published and reprinted with the Alarum.

From 1587 onwards he seems to have made a series of attempts as a playwright, though most of those attributed to him are mainly conjectural. That he ever became an actor is improbable in itself, and Collier's conclusion to that effect rested on 2 assumptions – that the “Lodge” of Henslowe's M.S. was a player, and that his name was Thomas – neither of which is supported by the text (see C. M. Ingleby, "Was Thomas Lodge an Actor?" 1868).

Having, in the spirit of his age, "tried the waves" with Captain Clarke in his expedition to Terceira and the Canaries, Lodge in 1591 made a voyage with Thomas Cavendish to Brazil and the Straits of Magellan, returning home. by 1593. During the Canaries expedition, to beguile the tedium of his voyage, he composed his prose tale of Rosalynde: Euphues golden legacie, printed in 1599. It has been frequently reprinted.

Before starting on his 2nd expedition he had published an historical romance, The History of Robert, Second Duke of Normandy, surnamed Robert the Divell; and he left behind him for publication Catharos: Diogenes in his singularity, a discourse on the immorality of Athens (London). Both appeared in 1591. Another romance in the manner of Lyly, Euphues Shadow: The battaile of the sences (1592), appeared while Lodge was still on his travels.

His next historical romance, the Life and Death of William Longbeard (1593), was more successful than the earlier. Lodge also brought back with him from the new world A Margarite of America (published 1596), a romance of the same description interspersed with many lyrics. Some readers would perhaps be prepared to give up this and much else of'Lodge's sugared verse, fine though much of it is in quality, largely borrowed from other writers, French and Italian in particular, in exchange for the lost Sailor's Kalendar, in which he must in some way or other have recounted his sea adventures.

If Lodge, as has been supposed, was the Alcon in Colin Clout's come Home Again, it may have been the influence of Spenser which led to the composition of Phillis, a volume of sonnets, in which the voice of nature seems only now and then to become audible, published with the narrative poem, "The Complaynte of Elstred," in 1593.

A Fig for Momus, on the strength of which Lodge has been called the earliest English satirist, and which contains eclogues addressed to [[Samuel Daniel}Daniel]] and others, an epistle addressed to Drayton, and other pieces, appeared in 1595.

Playwright

Lodge's ascertained dramatic work is small in quantity. In conjunction with Greene he, probably in 1590, produced in a popular vein the odd but far from feeble play of A Looking Glasse for London and England (printed in 1594). He had already written The Wounds of Civile War: Lively set forth in the Tragedies of Marius and Scilla (produced perhaps as early as 1587, and also published in 1594), a good 2nd-rate piece in the half-chronicle fashion of its age.

F.G. Fleay thinks there were grounds for assigning to Lodge Mucedorus and Amadine, played by the Queens Men about 1588, a share with Robert Greene in George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, and in Shakespeare's 2nd part of Henry VI; he also regards him as at least part-author of The True Chronicle of King Leir and his three Daughters (1594); and The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England (circa 1588); in the case of 2 other plays he allowed the assignation to Lodge to be purely conjectural.

Last years

File:WorksJosephus1640TP.jpg

1640 Edition of Thomas Lodge's translation of the works of Josephus

In the latter part of his life - possibly about 1596, when he published his Wits Miserie and the World's Madnesse, which is dated from Low Leyton in Essex, and the religious tract Prosopopeia (if, as seems probable, it was his), in which he repents him of his "lewd lines" of other days - he became a Catholic and engaged in the practice of medicine, for which Wood says he qualified himself by a degree at Avignon in 1600. 2 years afterwards he received the degree of M.D. from Oxford University.

His works henceforth have a sober cast, comprising translations of Josephus (1602), of Seneca (1614), a Learned Summary of Du Bartas's Divine Sepmainc (1625 and 1637), besides a Treatise of the Plague (1603), and a popular manual, which remained unpublished, on Domestic Medicine.

Early in 1606 he seems to have left England, to escape the persecution then directed against the Catholics; and a letter from him dated 1610 thanks the English ambassador in Paris for enabling him to return in safety. He was abroad on urgent private affairs in 1616. From this time to his death in 1625 nothing further concerning him remains to be noted.

Writing

His novel Rosalynde: Euphues golden legacie afterwards furnished the story of Shakespeare's As You Like It. The novel, which in its turn owes some, though no very considerable, debt to the medieval Tale of Gamelyn (unwarrantably appended to the fragmentary "Cookes Tale" in certain MSS. of Chaucer's works), is written in the euphuistic manner, but decidedly attractive both by its plot and by the situations arising from it.

In 1589 Lodge had given to the World a volume of poems bearing the title of the chief among them, Scillaes Metamorphosis: Enterlaced with the unfortunate love of Glaucus; more briefly known as Glaucus and Scilla (reprinted with a preface by S.W. Singer in 1819). To this tale Shakespeare was possibly indebted for the idea of Venus and Adonis.

Lodge's works, with the exception of his translations, have been reprinted for the Hunterian Club with an introductory essay by Edmund Gosse. This preface was reprinted in Gosse's Seventeenth Century Studies (1883). Of Rosalynde there are numerous modern editions.

Critical introduction

by Edmund Gosse

Lodge was the least boisterous of the noisy group of learned wits who, with Greene and Marlowe at their head, invaded London from the universities during the close of Elizabeth’s reign. He began to write as early as 1580, and was among the first who adopted the style invented by Lyly in his Euphues; but it was not until Greene had successfully composed several romances in this manner that Lodge came forward and surpassed both Greene and Lyly in his lovely fantastic pastoral of Rosalynde, composed under a tropical sky, as the author sailed with Captain Clarke between the Canaries and the Azores.

During the next 10 years Lodge was very prolific, closing this part of his career with the Margarite of America, an Arcadian romance, so named because the poet was in Patagonia when he wrote it. By this time, or soon after, all the young men of genius with whom he had associated were dead, and Lodge retired from literary life, and settled down as a physician. He lived on almost to the birth of Dryden; but his place as a poet is among the immediate followers of Spenser and precursors of Shakespeare.

In some respects Lodge is superior to most of the lyrical poets of his time. He is certainly the best of the Euphuists, and no one rivalled him in the creation of a dreamy scene, "out of space, out of time," where the loves and jousts of an ideal chivalry could be pleasantly tempered by the tending of sheep. His romances, with their frequent interludes of fine verse, are delightful reading, although the action flags, and there is simply no attempt at characterisation.

A very courtly and knightly spirit of morality perfumes the stately sentences, laden with learned allusion and flowing imagery; the lovers are devoted beyond belief, the knights are braver, the shepherds wiser, the nymphs more lovely and more flinty-hearted than tongue can tell; the courteous amorous couples file down the long arcades of the enchanted forest, and find the madrigal that Rosader or the hapless Arsinous has fastened to the balsam-tree, or else they gather round the alabaster tomb of one who died for love, and read the sonnet that his own hand has engraved there.

This languid elegant literature was of great service in refining both the language and the manners of the people. There was something false no doubt in the excessive delicacy of the sentiment, something trivial in the balanced rhythm and polish of the style; but both were excessively pretty, and both made possible the pastoral and lyrical tenderness of the next half-century. Among all the Elizabethans, no one borrowed his inspiration more directly from the Italians than Lodge; he was fortunately unaware of the existence of Marini, but the influence of Sannazaro and of the school of Tasso is strongly marked in his writings.

As a satirist Lodge is weak and tame; as a dramatist he is wholly without skill; as a writer of romances we have seen that he is charming, but thoroughly artificial. It is by his lyrical poetry that he preserves a living place in literature. His best odes and madrigals rank with the finest work of that rich age.

In short pieces of an erotic or contemplative character he throws aside all his habitual languor, and surprises the reader, who has been toiling somewhat wearily through the forest of Arden, by the brilliance and rapidity of his verse, by the élan of his passion, and by the bright turn of his fancy. In his best songs Lodge shows a command over the more sumptuous and splendid parts of language, that reminds the reader of Marlowe’s gift in tragedy; and of all the Elizabethans Lodge is the one who most frequently recalls Shelley to mind.

His passion in the Rosalynde has a little of the transcendental and ethereal character of the Epipsychidion, while now and again there are phrases so curiously like Shelley’s own, that we are tempted to believe that the rare quartos of Lodge must have passed through the later poet’s hands. One such example is –

‘A Turtle sate upon a leafless tree,

Mourning her absent fere,’

– with its curious resemblance to –

‘A widow bird sate mourning for her love

Upon a wintry bough.’

The sonnets of Lodge are gorgeous in language, but lax in construction; he did not understand the art of concentrating and sustaining his fancy in a sonnet; but the volume entitled Phillis contains many beautiful fragments and irregular pieces, tending more or less to the sonnet form.

His epics of Scilla’s Metamorphosis and Elstred are rambling pieces in the 6-line stanza, which led the way for The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis; but they reveal no real faculty for telling a classical story. In each poem the action is neglected, and the tale, such as it is, is smothered under a shower of courtly, flowery fancies.

A poem "In commendation of a solitary life," is one of Lodge’s most admirable pieces, but is long and does not lend itself to quotation.

He was a poet of fine genius, fervent, harmonious, and florid; but he was too sympathetic or not strong enough to resist the current of contemporary taste, running swiftly towards conceit.

Recognition

4 of his poems ("Rosaline," "Rosalind's Madrigal," "Phillis 1," and "Phillis 2") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

Poetry

• Phillis: Honoured with pastoral sonnets, elegies, and amorous delights. London: Iohn Busbie, 1593;
  • sonnet cycle also published in Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles (edited by Martha Foote Crow). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1896; Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1896.

Plays

• A Looking Glasse for London and Englande (with Robert Greene). London: Thomas Creede for William Barley, 1594.
• The Wounds of Ciuill War: Liuely set forth in the true tragedies of Marius and Scilla London: Iohn Danter, 1594.
• Alarum for London. London: William Ferbrand, 1602.

Novel

• Rosalynde: Euphues golden legacie. London: Thomas Orwin for T.G. & John Busbie, 1592; New York: Cassell, 1887; London: G. Newnes, 1902; London: Chatto & Windus, 1907.

Non-fiction

• A Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage-plays. London: Shakespeare Society, 1853.

Collected editions

• Complete Works (edited by Edmund Gosse). (Glasgow: Hunterian Club, 1875-1887. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Poetry Reading Series "Rosalynde" by Thomas Lodge

Love's Wantonness Full Audiobook by Thomas LODGE by Poetry, Multi-version

Poems by Thomas Lodge

1. Rosalynde's Madrigal

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language playwrights
• Timeline of British poetry

References

• Edward Andrews Tenney, Thomas Lodge. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (Cornell Studies in English 26), 1935; New York: Russell & Russell, 1969.
•  Ward, Adolphus William (1911). "Lodge, Thomas". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 860-861. . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 6, 2018.

External links

Poems

• Lodge in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "Rosaline," "Rosalind's Madrigal," "Phillis 1," and "Phillis 2".
• Selected Poetry of Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) (2 poems) at Representative Poetry Online.
• Thomas Lodge at the Poetry Foundation
• Lodge in The English Poets: An anthology: "Rosalynd's Madrigal, Rosader's Description of Rosalynd, "The Harmony of Love," " Phillis's Sickness," "Love's Wantonness"
• Dr. Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) info & 9 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Thomas Lodge at PoemHunter (12 poems)
• Thomas Lodge at Poetry Nook (45 poems)

Books

• Works by Thomas Lodge at Project Gutenberg
• Thomas Lodge at Amazon.com

About

• Thomas Lodge in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Thomas Lodge at Biography.com
• Thomas Lodge by William Minto at Sonnet Central
• Lodge, Thomas (1558?-1625) in the Dictionary of National Biography

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Lodge, Thomas