who printed the documents in his 'Memoir of Alleyn,' pp. 42-7, represented that Henslowe wrote of the poor debtor as 'Thomas' Lodge, and described him as a 'player,' whereas no mention of Christian name or occupation was made in the manuscript. The debtor's identity is doubtful. There is no ground for identifying him with the poet (cf. Ingleby, Was Thomas Lodge an Actor? 1868; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. xi. 107, 415).
But although Lodge is not known to have been an actor, he made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to write for the stage. At the commencement of his literary career he composed in monotonous blank verse a heavy tragedy in which he made liberal use of Plutarch and Sallust. Though perhaps produced in 1587, it was not published till 1594 (licensed for the press 24 May), when the title ran 'The Wounds of Civill War: lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Scilla. As it hath beene publiquely plaide in London, by the Right Honourable the Lord high Admirall his Servants.' The characters of the two heroes are drawn with some power, but the comic scenes are contemptible, and the play as a whole is undistinguished. Lodge is also positively known to have collaborated with his friend Greene in another dramatic piece, 'A Looking Glasse for London and England,' which was printed in the same year (1594). It was acted by Lord Strange's company (8 and 27 March 1591-2, and 19 April and 7 June 1592), and was licensed for the press 5 March 1593-4 (Henslowe, Diary, pp. 23, 25, 28; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ii. 23). The scriptural history of Nineveh is here applied to London. Such portions as can conjecturally be ascribed to Lodge prove more conclusively than the 'Wounds' that he had no dramatic gift. But it is suggested, and it is possible, that he wrote, either alone or conjointly with Greene, other dramatic pieces which are lost or unidentifiable. To his partnership with Greene have been assigned without any evidence the 'Laws of Nature' (Wood), 'The Contention between Liberalitie and Prodigalitie,' 1602 (ib.); 'Luminalia,' a masque, 1637 (ib.); and Alimony,' 1659 (ib.); as well as 'Henry VI,' pt. ii. (Fleay); 'James IV,' 1590(?) (ib.); 'George a Greene' (ib.); 'The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England' (ib.); and parts of the tragedy of 'Selimus' (ib.) Equally little weight can be given to Mr. Fleay's theory that Lodge was mainly responsible for 'Mucedorus' (1598), 'Richard III' (with Peele) (1594), 'King Leir and his Three Daughters' (1594), and 'A Warning for Fair Women'(1599). 'A Larum for London, or the Siege of Antwerp,' first published in 1600, has points of resemblance to 'The Looking Glasse,' and may partly be by Lodge; its scene is laid in 1576. Before 1589 Lodge had, he writes, taken an oath
To write no more of that whence shame doth grow
[Nor] tie my pen to pennie-knaves delight.
(Scillaes Metamorphosis, p. 28). 'Pennie-knaves' are the penny auditors at the playhouse, and the passage was doubtless the result of the frequent failure of the writer's dramatic ventures (Shakespeare Soc. Papers, iii. 145).
Lodge's youth was marked by much restlessness and unhappiness. In 1581, 'at the request of his friend Barnabe Rich, he had revised Rich's 'Adventures of Don Simonides,' a romance in the style of Lyly's 'Euphues.' In verses prefixed he wrote of 'the long distress' which had 'laid his Muse to rest.' At one period he seems to have lived somewhat riotously, and falling into pecuniary difficulties to have had recourse to usurers. In 1584 he turned his experiences to literary account by penning a tract called 'An Alarum against Usurers, containing tryed Experiences against worldly Abuses,' in which he offered youths much wise counsel after the manner of Lyly. With this tract was published the earliest of Lodge's prose romances, 'The Delectable Historie of Forbonius and Prisceria,' including an irregular sonnet and an eclogue in verse. The volume concluded with a metrical satire on contemporary society, entitled 'Truth's Complaint over England.' To Sir Philip Sidney he dedicated 'these primordia of my studies,' and Rich and John Jones prefixed commendatory verses.
Doubts respecting his fitness for the literary vocation seem in part to have led him to temporarily exchange 'bookes for armes.' But a military life quickly proved unsatisfactory, and about 1588 he made a voyage to the islands of Terceras and the Canaries with Captain Clarke, perhaps the 'John Clark' who was one of the commanders with Sir Richard Grenville and Lane in the Virginia voyage of 1585 (Lediard, Nav. Hist. p. 203b). No other Captain Clarke of the time seems known; no one of the name took part in the Earl of Cumberland's voyage to the Canaries in 1589. But despite the absence of details, the experience pleased Lodge, and he repeated it. In August 1591 he sailed, with Thomas Cavendish [q. v.] the circumnavigator, for South America, and visited the Straits of Magellan and Brazil. At Santos, in the latter country, he inspected the library of the Jesuits, and like his fellow-travellers suffered much privation (A Margarite of
