SOURCE: "The Critic's War," in Thomas Lodge, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967, pp. 16-28.

… [Before] discussing Lodge's first work, we must consider the religious forces and Elizabethan methods in writing which influenced him. In the 1570's, the Puritan interests in England began attacks upon traditional entertainments, especially the theater. But the label Puritan is misleading since it is as difficult to sort out and define a Puritan in this era as it is to characterize an Existentialist in ours. Literary historians and critics use the term indiscriminately, but modern studies of Puritanism in literature that have grown out of Milton scholarship have shown the necessity for care in reaching a definition. We forget, for instance, that the Puritan movement under Queen Elizabeth was a reform wholly within the Established Church and was not the militantly organized movement against it that it became in the early years of the seventeenth century. In the earlier period Roman Catholics, English Catholics, and Puritans were all within the framework of one church; it becomes, therefore, almost impossible to attach the Puritan label to any except a few outstanding men.

But we can ascertain the fact that almost everyone who attached himself to the Puritan movement in any fashion decried plays and playwrights.³ This characteristic was also shared by the Anglicans who supported the Puritan reformers in attacks on the stage. Archbishop Laud and Giles Fletcher, as representatives of the Anglican attitude, found nothing good to say about plays. In general, Anglican attacks were little different from the Puritan ones.⁴ And, in summation, it may be said not only that this front against the theater was part of the concentrated attention upon public morality, but that concern with church organization and practices was a later development that makes distinctions within the church clearer.

Second, method in writing concerns what we consider to be plagiarism but what the Elizabethans called imitation. For example, Lodge borrowed much material for his works from Continental writers, and no less a figure than Shakespeare, as we have seen, based a play upon a later work of Lodge, to cite only two examples.

There are reasonable explanations which help us to understand this practice during this period. First, Aristotle's doctrine of imitation was widely accepted in the universities. Imitation denied independent invention in writing, and claimed all literary production as common property. These were primary laws; differences occurred only in interpretation by the individual writer. Pietro Bembo and Julius Caesar Scaliger among Continental critics, for instance, held for close imitation of Cicero in prose and of Virgil in poetry; others were more liberal, as was Baldassare Castiglione, whose views were available to English readers in Sir Thomas Hoby's translation of The Book of the Courtier. But all critics agreed that imitation was essential, that independent invention was bad practice, and that all written material was available for others' use. Once these facts are recognized, the modern reader better understands the Elizabethan imitator.

A specific example of imitation as the Elizabethans understood it is the following excerpt from Lodge's first work, the Reply to Gosson William Ringler has found that Lodge relied heavily on a Continental source, Badius Ascensius' preface to an edition of Terence's plays (1502);⁵ and Lodge did borrow extensively from this source, but he mentions his authority prominently: "Persius was made a poete Diuino furore percitus; and whereas the poets were sayde to call for the Muses helpe, ther mening was no other, as Iodocus Badius reporteth, but to call for heauenly inspiration from aboue to direct theyr endeauors."⁶

And then he continued: "that thys is trewe the name of Tragedye doth importe, for if you consider whence it came, you shall perceive (as Iodocus Badius reporteth) that it drewe his original of Tragos, Hircus et Ode, Cantus (so called), for that the actors thereof had in rewarde for theyr labour a gotes skynne fylled wyth wyne."⁷ And: "Also Iodocus Badius will assertain you that the actors for shewing pleasure receued some profite."⁸ Lodge gave more credit, for those who need to find credits, than ever a Shakespeare gave Lodge for As You Like It.

A second explanation for widespread imitation lies in the demand for books in the sudden burst of literary activity following 1580. The invention of the printing press signaled the end of one of the blackest periods of English letters; following the death of Chaucer the whole field was begun anew in the late fifteenth century when the first light of the Continental Renaissance reached England. Writing in a new language for a new age was a bright, fresh thing; and certainly writers had not had enough time or sound enough bases on which to establish a code of ethics. Too often we are ready to judge the writers of this period by our own standards, surrounded as we are by decades of copyright laws and other protections which the Elizabethans could hardly know. Universities were not yet preaching "give credit where credit is due," and the complicated day of the footnote had not yet appeared. Without this firmly established legal and ethical system, the Elizabethan writer should not be condemned by us without first placing ourselves in his frame of reference.

IV The Literary Quarrel

One of the amazing things about the literary quarrel over the stage and other entertainments is that it began so early. Elizabethan drama had certainly not yet emerged from university interludes and Italian comedies, and in 1579 Everyman was still the best play written in English. But, in spite of this scarcity, the temperature of the Elizabethan theater was dividing rapidly into two ranges, both rising; one was generated by the opposition—the Puritans—and the other was supported not only by new enterprisers, such as Richard Burbage, who saw profit in Elizabethan love of spectacle, but also by playwrights, who saw fame, or at least sustenance, in this same penchant.

There was evidently enough early activity on the stage and in literary production, however, to arouse comment; and such criticism began with John Northbrooke's pamphlet, Treatise wherein Dicing, Dancing, Vain Plays or Interludes, with Other Idle Pastimes…. Are Reproved (1577), a dialogue between unstable Youth and wise Age which relies on the pagan and Christian past for its argument against frivolous entertainments. Northbrooke mentions by name the two public playhouses just opened, the Theater and the Curtain, as evidence that Englishmen were turning away from sermons and the sterner stuff that had made them great in the past.

The next attack is a famous one, Stephen Gosson's School of Abuse (1579), to be considered later, which was followed by a tract ascribed to Anthony Munday, A Second and Third Blast of Retrait [retreat] from Plays and Theaters (1580), which like Northbrooke's work, condemns the congregating of persons, especially on Sunday, for any purpose other than worship. Of these two works, Gosson's School of Abuse deserves fuller attention since it prompted Lodge to prepare the first formal defense of plays, poetry, and entertainment in general.⁹ In order to understand Lodge's position, we must first look at Gosson and his tract; for the argument between them was as personal as it was critical of contemporary entertainments in London.

Stephen Gosson was a man of generally unsavory fame who was Lodge's contemporary at Oxford, although there is no evidence that they were acquainted. He wrote plays in London, then turned against plays and playwrights as a vehement spokesman for the Puritans, and he ended his career as an Anglican clergyman who was a militant opponent of the Puritan cause. William Ringler, who has written a study attempting to rescue Gosson from critics' wrath at these sudden turns, states that Gosson was probably hired by Puritan interests to attack the stage.¹⁰

Gosson's School of Abuse is divided into two main parts, the historical and the moral evidence against plays and similar entertainments. For the historical argument, Gosson turned to the Greek and Roman writers for assistance. Ringler has shown how much Gosson depended on Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and others; but Plato was foremost because of his famous condemnation of poets which gave attackers so much pleasure and the apologists so much pain. Gosson lists the many ancients who banished poets, concluding that Homer is worth reading, but few others.

The moral argument of the School is more contemporary than the historical argument. Little condemnation of individual plays is found; his attack is directed much more against what goes on in the audience than against what is projected from the stage: "In our assemblies at playes in London, you shall see such heaving and shooving, suche ytching and shouldering to sytte by women…."¹¹ He blames the theater, therefore, for being a market place for vice: "Every wanton and [his] paramour, everye man and his mistresse, every John and his Joane, every knave and his queane are there first acquainted, and cheapen the marchandise in that place, which they pay for else where, as they can agree."¹²

Gosson, who admits that some plays are worthy, names a few, and among them is one that represents "the greedinesse of worldly chusers, and the bloody minds of usurers," and his own play, Catiline's Conspiracies, which, as he says, is "usually brought in at the Theater," and which he acknowledges as "a pig of mine owne Sowe."¹³ But he does not give us specific information about what he finds wrong with individual plays or with the whole of drama on the stage. The pamphlet concludes with a general condemnation of social London and with an appeal for Englishmen to "marke what wee were before, and what we are now." Englishmen were "in valure not yielding to Sythia; the women in courage passing the Amazons." But, he warns, "the exercise that is nowe among us is banquetting, playing, pyping, and dauncing, and all such delightes as may winne us to pleasure, or rocke us in sleepe."¹⁴

Gosson dedicated his work, without permission, to Sir Philip Sidney; and in a great show of moral bravado he addressed one of two letters to Sir Richard Pipe, Lord Mayor of London, to advise him that, "If your Honour desire to see the Citie well governed, you must as well set to your hand to thrust out abuses, as showe your selfe willing to have all amended."¹⁵ The other letter was to "the Gentlewomen, Citizens of London," asking them to amend their conduct:

You must keepe your sweete faces from scorching in the sun, chapping in the winde, and warping in the weather, which is best perfourmed by staying within; and if you perceive your selves in any daunger at your owne doors, either allured by curtesie in the day, or assaulted with musike in the night, close uppe your eyes, stoppe your eares, tye up your tongues: when they speake, answeare not; when they hallowe, stoope not…. These are hard lessons which I teache you: neverthelesse, drinke uppe the potion, though it like not your tast, and you shal be eased: resist not the surgeon, though hee strike with his knife, and you shall bee cured.¹⁶

Although Gosson goes far afield in his attack and although the pamphlet is short, scarcely any activity is left untouched; and we cannot miss the arrogance of the self-assured university student in his first moral endeavor.

The School of Abuse must have created quite a stir among the law students of the Inns of Court, who, as we have seen, were supporters of the new theater; indeed, Gray's Inn had as a member George Gascoigne, whose plays had already met some popularity on the stage. Gascoigne and others no doubt encouraged the young Lodge to try his hand in a defense of their position, and the result was the Reply to Gosson. The Reply was published privately, without license from the London authorities, and was almost immediately withdrawn from circulation, apparently by Puritan city officials. Few readers saw the work, and it may well have been that Gosson never read it. Only two copies survive, and they are badly printed.¹⁷

Other men had preceded Lodge in writing about poetry, such as Roger Ascham's chapter in the Scholemaster (1570), Richard Willes' Latin Poetatum Liber (1573), George Gascoigne's Certaine Notes of Instruction (1575), and George Whetstone's brief note in the Dedication to The Right excellent and famous Historye of Promos and Cassandra (1578); but none of these authors was required to defend creative activity in any area. Although not much of Lodge's defense is original, it is stated in English for Englishmen to read.

Lodge begins his argument with a general defense of poets and poetry; then he discusses specifically music, plays, and, though briefly, "Carders, Dicers, Fencers, Bowlers, Daunsers, and Tomblers." In reply to Gosson's contention that fictional or creative poetry is vain in comparison with history and philosophy, Lodge asks: "If you say that Poetes did labour about nothing, tell me (I besech you) what wonders wroughte those your dunce Doctors in ther reasons de ente, et non ente, in theyr definition of no force, and les witt?"¹⁸ And, as Lodge pursues Gosson, he asks more pointed questions: "What made Erasmus labor in Euripides tragedies? Did he indeauour by painting them out of Greke into Latin to manifest sinne vnto vs?"¹⁹ Or he asks: "You looke vpon the refuse of the abuse, nether respecting the importance of the matter nor the weighte of the wryter…. Chaucer in pleasant vein can rebuke sin vncontrold: and though he be lauish in the letter, his sence is serious."²⁰

In referring to Classical examples of the poet's "fury," through the well-known stories, especially of Hesiod and Persius, Lodge precedes Sidney's statement in the Defense of Poetry about the divine nature of poetry: "I reson not that al poets are holy, but I affirme that poetry is a heauenly gift, a perfit gift, then which I know not greater pleasure."²¹ And finally Lodge admits that some poets and playwrights, as Gosson had charged, write scandalous poetry and plays: "I abore those poets that sauor of ribaldry: I will with the zealous admit the expullcion of such enormities: poetry is dispraised not for the folly that is in it, but for the abuse whiche manye ill wryters couller by it."²²

Little of real critical value emerges from Lodge's Reply or from Gosson's School of Abuse. But we should not expect to find sound criticism when so little had been produced to nourish it. Not until the age of John Dryden was there a sufficient heritage in literature upon which to build solid critical foundations.

V Euphuistic Style

Aside from content, the style of the Reply deserves some comment, for it is the style that Lodge uses in all of his later prose. This style had its progenitor in John Lyly, who was supposedly a friend of Gosson's, and who was a contemporary of both Gosson and Lodge at Oxford. Lyly's Euphues (1578) brought to English literature a style so distinctive that it is called euphuistic. Briefly, it involves the use of elaborately balanced phraseology, loaded with illustrations from the commonplaces of life, or from the fantastic speculations of unnatural natural history. Gosson's School of Abuse is heavily euphuistic throughout: "I must confesse that poets are whetstones of wit, notwithstanding that wit is dearely bought: where honie and gall are mixt, it will be hard to sever the one from the other. The deceitfull phisition geveth sweete syrroppes to make his poyson goe downe the smoother: the jugler casteth a myst to work the closer: the syrens songue is the saylers wracke; and fowlers whistle the birdes death; the wholesome baite the fishes bane."²³ The alliteration in the first sentence is followed by examples that are neatly balanced but seemingly interminable to the modern reader. The pace is leisurely, and the symmetry is carefully worked out by the writer.

Lodge's Reply is somewhat more sparing of these characteristics; he preserves in all of his prose works what is best in Lyly—the balance, alliteration, and parallelism: "Protogenes can know Appelles by his line though he se him not, and wise men can consider by the Penn the aucthoritie of the writer thoughe they know him not. The Rubie is discerned by his pale rednes; and who hath not hard that the Lyon is knowne by hys clawes? Though Æsopes craftie crowe be never so deftlye decked, yet is his double dealing esely desiphered."²⁴ The parallel structure in the "though … though" clauses of the first sentence do not intrude heavily on the reader's senses, and the three illustrations or applications are not stated in the same tiresome iteration that marks the worst of Lyly's prose and that of most of his imitators.

VI The Results

Content and style should have made the Reply reasonably successful; but it could not circulate freely, as we have seen. It had, however, made an impression in a way Lodge probably never considered: to his own later sorrow, he had made a large part of his defense a personal attack on Gosson. In the second paragraph of the Reply, Lodge begins the abuse and sets the tone for what later would become a full symphony: "There came to my hands lately a litle (woulde God a wittye) pamphelet, baring a fayre face as though it were the scoole of abuse; but, being by me aduisedly wayed, I fynd it the oftscome of imperfections, the writer fuller of wordes then iudgement, the matter certainly as ridiculus as serius."²⁵

Throughout the pamphlet, Lodge keeps the personal fight close to the surface, even though it appears he never so much as met Gosson. Gosson has a "giddy brain"; is compared to Terence's Gnatho, "Whom if we shoulde seeke in our dayes, I suppose he would not be farr from your parson." Lodge accuses Gosson of using "diuinite to couer your knauery," and tells him, "Alas! Simple Irus, begg at knowledge gate awhile." Even when Lodge makes a good point for the defense of poetry, he cannot resist a stab at his opponent, as when he describes the divine inspiration of the poet—the poetic fury—and concludes with "it pitieth me to bring a rodd of your owne making to beate you wythal."²⁶ This personal invective must have stung Gosson, although he might have expected it; in any case, he later settled accounts.

The restless, stung spirit of the indefatigable Gosson did not allow him to remain silent after the personal jabs Lodge wrote in his Reply. Indeed, before Lodge's work was suppressed at the printer's, Gosson had heard a rumor the Reply was in process and had hurried to write A Short Apology for the School of Abuse, which was probably printed in November, 1579.²⁷ The first part of the treatise is a reply to the now lost Straunge News out of Affrick by an unknown author, which Gosson mentions pointedly in the beginning of his Ephemerides of Phialo; the last few paragraphs are centered on Lodge's Reply, of which Gosson has only heard reports but apparently not the name of the writer: "Our players since I set out the Schole of Abuse, haue trauailed to some of mine acquaintance of both Vniuersities, with fayre profers, and greater promises of rewardes, yf they woulde take so much paine as too write against mee."²⁸

Although Gosson does not know Lodge personally, he is ready to hurl personal abuse: "they were driuen to flie to a weake hedge, and fight for themselues with a rotten stake…. It is told mee that they haue got one in London to write certain Honest excuses, for so they tearme it, to their dishonest abuses which I reuealed."²⁹ And Gosson then promises, once the writer and his work are known, a great battle; but he had to wait for some time to get a copy of Lodge's Reply. By 1582 he had probably seen it, but he had also been needled by the now lost Play of Playes, another defense by an unknown writer, both of which Gosson attacked in Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582).³⁰ He had dedicated the School of Abuse and the Ephemerides of Phialo (1579) to Sir Philip Sidney without response; he now dedicated his new work to Sir Frances Walsingham, bulwark of Puritanism. From the beginning Lodge is dealt with roundly, as Gosson addresses Walsingham: "I thoughte it necessarye to nettle one of their Orators aboue the rest, not of any set purpose to deface hym, because hee hath dealt very grossely, homely, and vncharitably with me, but like a good Surgeon to cut, and to seare, when the place requireth, for his own amendment."³¹ And cut and sear he does, for he says that Lodge "… is (as I heare by hys owne frendes, to hys repentance if he can perceiue it) hunted by the heauy hand of God, and because little better than a vagarant…. "³² In the first action he calls Lodge "in witt, simple; in learning, ignorant; in attempt, rash; in name, Lodge…. "³³ But Gosson did not really know his opponent; he calls him William Lodge.³⁴

The quarrel, now largely personal in one aspect, and widely varying in another—Gosson insists on arguing on moral grounds, Lodge on esthetic—was not settled until 1584 when Lodge ended it in the preface to Alarum Against Usurers. From that point both writers dropped their weapons, and were not heard of again in the ensuing critical exchanges. Sir Philip Sidney's A Defense of Poetry, written in the 1580's but not published until 1595, became the greatest defense of poetry and drama that the age produced. This urbane and witty pamphlet, written in a style stripped of euphuistic excess, and so orderly in its presentation, must have made it clear to Gosson, Lodge, and others that it was useless for them to continue the battle.

VII "A Doleful Dump"

What interests us at this point is the "heauy hand of God." As we have seen, Lodge had come to London in 1578, had settled into the life of the Inns easily, and within a year had mingled in the pamphlet war. Three years later he had entered his supplication for the Master of Arts degree at Oxford, and it had been accepted.³⁵ Some time between February, 1581, the date of Lodge's petition, and 1582, the date of Gosson's Plays Confuted, the heavy hand descended: Lodge did not receive his degree. This fact, together with notices in the Acts of the Privy Council, help fill in the lack of known data during these years. The first notice in the Acts is on June 27, 1581. A Thomas Lodge³⁵ was called to Council to answer certain charges—what they were is not known—and he was imprisoned until autumn of that year. Edward A. Tenney believes imprisonment arose from Thomas' turn to the Roman faith.³⁷

The fact is that Lodge was imprisoned for many months. We know he had become a member of the Roman Church, but the date is impossible to determine, and it is unlikely the conversion got much publicity in Elizabethan England. Since his lawsuits with moneylenders and family did not begin for several years, the imprisonment seems, therefore, to point to recusancy, which would not be an unusual charge during Elizabeth's reign.

The reasoning behind Lodge's turn in faith is clearer. Sir Thomas Lodge, sometime dapper Lord Mayor of London, had dabbled freely in various religions. Born in the year of Henry VIII's accession, he had lived and flourished under both Edward VI and Mary Tudor; so young Thomas would have had some acquaintance with the "old religion" through his father, and perhaps through other members of his family. Not only had he found Roman influence at Oxford, but there were a number of recusants at Lincoln's Inn. It is not unlikely that the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of the outlawed church appealed to young Lodge—if the tenets of faith did not.

While in prison, Lodge revised the work of author-soldier Barnabe Rich, The Strange and Wonderful Adventures of Don Simonides. In Lodge's dedicatory verses he complains that his "long distresse hath laied his Muse to rest, / Or duld his Sprightes, or sences at the lest." The final stanza appends a moral which may indicate his own feelings:

I leaue thee now, my Muse affordes no more,
A doleful dumpe, pulles backe my pleasant vaine,
Looke thou for praise, by men of learned lore,
Despise the skoffe, that growes from shuttle braine,
For me I honour thee for taking paine,
And wishe eche youth, that spendes his tyme amisse,
Would fixe his penne to write such woorkes as this.³⁸

As soon as he was released from prison, Lodge was greeted by Gosson's Plays Confuted, as we have seen. Not only was he attacked personally, but attacked in his home court; for Gosson addressed a letter prefacing the work "to the Right Worshipful Gentlemen and students, of both Universities, and the Inns of Court." Lodge's brother William was a member of the Inns; it must have been somewhat embarrassing for the enthusiastic young writer to return from prison only to find his reputation at stake.

But literary problems were the least of Lodge's immediate worries. In 1582-83 there began a long series of family-founded financial difficulties. His family undoubtedly disapproved of his writing pamphlets, his consorting with Papist beliefs, his failure to achieve the master's degree, and his imprisonment. The Lodges were becoming landed aristocrats in the second generation; to them, son Thomas was a failure.

At his father's funeral in 1584, Thomas must have been a disappointed but thoughtful young man. He certainly was no success as a writer, and prospects of civil appointment after imprisonment were slight. He had been attacked personally in print; he was disinherited and rejected by his family. Thomas Lodge must have decided it was time for him to take a new direction.