"Thomas Lodge and his Renaissance contemporaries-- among them William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Philip Sidney-- were all searching for new means of literary expression. Lodge experimented in prose fiction and the essay, in drama, verse narrative and verse satire, and in various forms of lyrics; in doing so, he helped to build the foundation in these genres for writers of generations to follow. This study traces his contribution to the developmentof English literature during the reign of Elizabeth I and James I. Beyond his writing, Thomas Lodge's life was full one. He voyaged to the New World with an Elizabethan privateer. He studied medicine at the University of Avignon, France, and was a practicing physician London. He lost his life attending the sick in the London Plague of 1625. Wesley D. Rae considers the multifaceted aspects of Lodge's career, and he views Lodge not only as an author of note, but as a Renaissance gentleman and a true representative of his age." -Publisher.