is last _exit_ (of the plague, I think) in September 1625, leaving
then behind him a widow called Joan." It has been conjectured [rather
foolishly] that he was a Roman Catholic, from a statement made by one of
his biographers that, while he practised medicine in London, he was much
patronised by persons of that persuasion.

There are but two existing dramatic productions on the title-pages of
which the name of Lodge is found:[97] the one he wrote alone, and the
other in partnership with Robert Greene:--

(1.) The Wounds of Civill War. Lively set forth in the true Tragedies of
Marius and Scilla, &c. Written by Thomas Lodge, Gent. 1594, 4to.

(2.) A Looking Glasse for London and Englande. Made by Thomas Lodge,
Gentleman, and Robert Greene, _in Artibus Magister_. 1594, 1598, 1602,
1617, all in 4to.[98]

The most remarkable [of his works], and that which has been most often
reprinted, is his "Rosalynde" which, as is well known, Shakespeare
closely followed in "As You Like It."[99]

Anterior to the date of any of his other pieces must have been Lodge's
defence of stage-plays, because Stephen Gosson replied to it about 1582.
It was long thought, on the authority of Prynne, that Lodge's tract was
called "The Play of Plays," but Mr Malone ascertained that to be a
different production. The only copy of Lodge's pamphlet seen by Mr
Malone was without a title, and it was probably the same that was sold
among the books of Topham Beauclerc in 1781. It is spoken of in "The
French Academy" [1589] as having "lately passed the press;" but Lodge
himself, in his "Alarum against Usurers," very clearly accounts for its
extreme rarity: he says, "by reason of the slenderness of the subject
(because it was in defence of plaies and play-makers) the godly and
reverent that had to deal in the cause, misliking it, forbad the
publishing;" and he charges Gosson with "comming by a private unperfect
coppye," on which he framed his answer, entitled, "Plays confuted in
Five Actions."

Mr Malone ("Shakespeare," by Boswell, ii. 250) contends that Spenser
alludes to Lodge, in his "Tears of the Muses," under the name of Alcon,
in the following lines:--

"And there is pleasing Alcon, could he raise
His tunes from lays to matters of more skill;"

and he adds that Spenser calls Lodge Alcon, from one of the characters
in "A Looking Glasse for London and Englande;" but this argument would
apply just as much to Lodge's coadjutor Greene. Mr Malone