MAJOR WORKS AND THEMES

As is apparent in Rosalynd , Lodge’s work is often concerned with appropriate outward expressions of inward virtue. The actions of the virtuous person are done not for fame but for the good of others. Lodge dedicated his first published work, “An Alarum for Usurers,” to Sir Philip Sidney, and in the opening words of this dedication Lodge clearly values virtuous actions above noble lineage. He writes, “It is not (noble Gentleman) the titles of Honour that allureth me, nor the nobilitie of your Parents that induceth me, but the admiration of your vertues that perswadeth me, to publish my pore travailes under your undoubted protection” (3). Lodge repeats this ideal in the dying words of the character Sir John in the opening pages of the romance: “Let your country’s care be your heart’s content, and think that you are not born for yourselves, but to level your thoughts to be loyal to your prince, careful to the common weal, and faithful to your friends” (11). In Rosalynd , the sons of Sir John of Bordeaux must prove themselves worthy of the duke’s dying admonitions. Youngest son, Rosader, while steadfast, must yet perform acts to match his noble character, and Saladyne, errant from gentlemanly comport, must be reformed by Dame Fortune.

The euphuistic style and pastoral idealism of the work may give some readers cause to underestimate Rosalynd , rife as it is with humorous and typically alliterative euphuistic puns; for example, Sir John tells his sons that “women are wantons, and yet men cannot want one” (12). However, Lodge intentionally sets up a hall of mirrors in introducing the work that produces a narrative stance broad enough to contend with any voices of dissent. First Lodge dedicates the work, which he calls “the work of a soldier and a scholar,” to Lord Hunsdon, so that he might be “under the favour of so martial and learned a patron” (5). After thus arraying himself with both the “launce and the bay,” he offers an address to the gentlemen readers in which he further hedges his bets (7). He begins, “[L]ook not here to find any sprigs of Pallas’ bay tree” because “they be matters above my capacity” (7). He claims to be “a soldier and a sailor” bursting with passion whose labors were “wrought in the ocean, when every line was wet with a surge” (7). Furthermore, he asserts that those who find the work perhaps too wet (highly emotional) might be a Momus or a Midas who may “find fault with the tackling, when he knows not the shrowdes” (8). In other words, Lodge is saying that if you find it beyond your taste for passions, you are not playing the game in earnest—only those with a serious sense of humor need apply. The message is profound if you accept the messenger in the spirit in which it is written.

The mirrors do not end there. The full title of the work is Rosalynde. Euphues Golden Legacy: found after his death in his Cell at Silexedra , and following his epistle to the gentlemen readers Lodge includes a dedication supposedly written by John Lyly’s fictional character Euphues himself, to his friend Philautus. In his dedicatory letter, Euphues explains that the book Rosalynd is for the sons of his friend in order to teach them that “virtue is the king of labours, opinion the mistress of fools” (Shakespeare Classics, edition xxx). Euphues ends his dedication by advising his friend “that instead of worldly goods [he] leave [his] sons virtue and glory” (xxx). Thus, having attributed the book to a soldier and a scholar, then disclaiming the scholar and claiming the passion of the sailor and of the sea and further espousing earned rather than inherited gentility or refinement, Lodge begins the work in “earnest,” which, as we know, begins with Sir John’s admonitions to his sons regarding the same earned gentility. Thus, Lodge presents an ideal model wrapped in layers of disguises for his narrative voice. The effect is as if he were saying to us, “Here is the ideal; I know it is high flown, but it is nonetheless crucial to aim for it.” If Lodge had simply presented the euphuistic pastoral ideal without narrative distance, as it were, readers may have more easily laughed off his Arden. Lodge’s layers of dedication say to the reader, “I know you know I know, so let’s agree to suspend our cynicism” perhaps in the spirit of earnest game or serious jesting. This spirit of serious jest permeates the work since Rosalynd herself takes on layers of disguise by playing Ganymede, who then pretends to be Rosalynd. Shakespeare* certainly saw this potential in Rosalynd .

While the plot of the dying father and his three sons was provided to Lodge by the medieval tale of Gamylen, this source contains neither Rosalynde nor the romance theme. Often people study Lodge’s romance today because it is the main source for Shakespeare’s As You Like It . To Rosalynd , Shakespeare added Touchstone and Jacques (who may be based on Lodge himself) and streamlined the plot. Where Lodge presents the story in the euphuistic style of Lyly, Shake-speare’s quick-witted dialogue extends the irony that Lodge more subtly provides through his dedicatory devices.

In Alarum against Usurers , his first published work, Lodge realistically describes the practices of London usurers to whom he had himself fallen victim. At the time that he was writing Alarum , Lodge was in financial difficulties, having spent what inheritance was left him through an extravagant lifestyle made possible by the financing of such usurers. Thus, in his Alarum , in typically euphuistic simile, Lodge warns those who might “become meate for [usurers’] mouths…to shunne the Scorpion ere she devoureth” (3). This attempt to expose depravity through realistic depiction of lowlife in London in Alarum is an early example of the style that came to fruition in the work of Robert Greene, Thomas Dekker,* and Ben Jonson.* Furthermore this “realistic” element probably led to Lodge’s later satirical mode. In his Defence of Plays , Lodge voices the need for a satirist who will “discypher the abuses of the worlde” and thus “ryd our assemblies” of such “notorious offenders” (39). Perhaps this was an announcement of his intention to write what later appeared as A Fig for Momus , a collection of satirical poems and epistles. While John Skelton,* Thomas Wyatt,* George Gascoigne,* and Edward Hake preceded Lodge in writing Tudor satire, Lodge was among the first (with John Donne and Bishop Hall) to publish satire in English that follows the classical model of formal epistle in verse (in Horace’s and Juvenal’s mode) in heroic couplets—the form that appears in A Fig for Momus —to match Latin hexameters.

Lodge wrote two plays, A Looking Glass for London (in collaboration with Robert Greene) and Wounds of Civill War. Wounds , which depicts the events of the civil wars in Rome during 88 to 78 B.C. in chronological fashion, is one of the earliest extant plays that attempt an accurate sequence of historical events. A Looking Glass for London is better crafted than Wounds , but it is often assigned the dubious accolade of being the last medieval morality play complete with Heywood’s traditional Vice character. Unlike Wounds, Looking Glass enjoyed some popularity in its own time. It was performed repeatedly in 1592 and reprinted four times, in 1598, 1602, 1605, and 1617.

Debate over the transmission of influence between Lodge and Christopher Marlowe arises here because of similarities between Wounds and Tamburlaine and between Looking Glass and Dr. Faustus . Doubts regarding the dates of composition of all four plays feed this controversy. There is a triumph scene in Wounds in which Sylla enters sitting in a chariot drawn by people he has conquered. Similarly, in Tamburlaine , after his wife, Zenocrate, has died, Tamburlaine enters in a chariot drawn by kings he has recently conquered. Many critics assert that this shows Lodge was influenced by Marlowe. However, Marlowe uses the device much more dramatically. The kings have bits in their mouths, and Tamburlaine has “reins in his left hand, and in his right hand a whip.” It seems to me more likely that Marlowe enlarged the idea from Lodge and unlikely that Lodge would use such a dramatic scene from Marlowe in a weakened form.

There may be a similar transmission between Looking Glass and Faustus . The repentance scenes of Lodge’s Usurer and Marlowe’s Faustus contain obvious parallels. In the words of Lodge’s Usurer:

Hell gapes for me, heaven will not hold my soule.
You mountains shroude me from the God of truth.
Mee-thinkes I see him sit to judge the earth….
Cover me hilles, and shroude me from the lord. (61)

In the words of Faustus:

And see where God
Stretcheth out his arm and bends his ireful brows.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God….   Earth, gape…
Ugly hell, gape not! (5.2. 147–87)

Since recent scholars tend to date Looking Glass at 1587 or 1588 and Dr. Faustus as perhaps as late as 1592, it is likely that Marlowe again developed this material from Lodge.