LODGE, THOMAS, a dramatist, was born about 1556 in Lincolnshire. In 1573 he entered Oxford as a servitor of Trinity College, but left it without taking a degree, and repaired to London. There he seems to have become an actor, and to have begun to write for the stage about 1580, when he produced his Defence of Stage Plays, in answer to Gosson's School of Abuse. In 1584 he was a student at Lincoln's Inn, and published, among other works, his Alarm against Usurers. Soon after this he accompanied Captain Clarke on his voyage to Tercera and the Canaries; and while sailing through the Straits of Magellan, in company with Cavendish, he wrote his Margerite of America, which was published in 1596. Some time after this period, according to Wood, he studied medicine, and took a degree at Avignon. On his return to London he is supposed to have practised with great success as a physician, and to have published in 1603 a Treatise of the Plague. Wood says he died of the plague in September 1625.
As a dramatist, he is placed by Collier "in a rank superior to Greene, but in some respects inferior to Kyd." His extant plays are two—The Wounds of Civil War twelveth set forth in the true Tragedies of Marina and Sylla, 4to, 1594, reprinted in the last edition of Dodley's Old Plays; and A Looking-Glass for London and England, written in conjunction with Greene, published 1594, and after passing through several editions, reprinted in 1617. A collection of his pastoral and lyric poetry was published in 1819. His novel, entitled Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacy, 4to, 1590 (reprinted in Collier's Shakspeare's Library, 1840), furnished Shakspeare with the framework of the plot in "As You Like It."