Lodge, Thomas

(?1558-1625)

   Born in London, the son of Sir Thomas Lodge, lord mayor of London (1562), he was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Oxford, from where he graduated M.A. in 1580. He abandoned the study of law for literature, thus forfeiting a promised legacy from his mother (who died in 1579) if he continued his law studies. He later studied medicine at the University of Avignon in 1598 and was incorporated M.D. at Oxford in 1602, becoming a respected physician in London and Brussels. He died in London fighting the plague. Two of his plays are The Wounds of Civil War (1594) and A Looking Glasse for London and England (1594). A Fig for Moumus (1595) is a collection of satirical poems. He is best remembered for the prose romance Rosalynde (1590)- the source of William Shakespeare's As You Like It- and for his poems scattered throughout his romances, such as A Margarite of America. Some of his poems: "Egloga Prima Demades Damon," "Montanus praise of his faire Phæbe," "Montanus Sonnet to his faire Phæbe," "Scillaes Metamorphosis," "The Barginet of Antimachus," "Thirsis Ægloga Secunda."

   Sources: An Antidote Against Melancholy. Pratt Manufacturing Company, 1884. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Poets of the English Language. Vol. I. W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, eds. Viking Press, 1950. The Anchor Antholog y of Seventeenth-Century Verse, Vol. II. Louis L. Martz and Richard S. Sylvester, eds. Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Complete Works of Thomas Lodge: Volume 4. Russell and Russell, 1963. The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse. Emrys Jones, ed. Oxford University Press, 1991. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659. David Norbrook, ed. Penguin Books, 1992.