The Missing Title of Thomas Lodge's Reply to Gosson's "School of Abuse"

Abstract

STEPHEN GOSSON'S 'pleasaunt invective against Poets, Pipers, Plaiers, Iesters and such like caterpillars of a commonwelth,' published in the summer of 1579, raised quite a storm of opposition. 'Only two of the replies have come down to us, one being Sidney's celebrated Apology for Poetry and the other the earliest known work by Thomas Lodge, the author of Rosalynde. Lodge's counterblast was first reprinted in 1853 for the old Shakespeare Society, under the editorship of David Laing. He gives its title as A Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays, but this is nothing more than a convenient description of its contents, as the tract originally appeared without a title-page in order to escape the censor's eye. At that time books were licensed, not as later, by the Archbishop or the Bishop of London, but by the Stationers' Company acting upon the advice of some 'discreet minister.' Perhaps the said minister in 1579 was an opponent of plays1, or perhaps the City Corporation, always ready to do their enemies the actors a bad turn, brought their influence to bear upon the Stationers' Company. In any case, Lodge was refused a license, and his book could riot therefore be published in the ordinary fashion. Apparently only a very few mutilated copies found their way into circulation. In spite of this it is possible, I believe, to reconstruct in part the missing title-page. In his Apologie for the School of Abuse published late in 1579, Gosson declares that he has heard that the players had 'got one in London to write certaine Honest Excuses, for so they tearme it, to their dishonest abuses which I reuealed.' My object is to prove that Honest Excuses was the name which originally stood in the forefront of Lodge's book. Gosson had not seen Honest Excuses at the time of writing, so that what he tells us about it in his Apologie is only hearsay, and he promises to answer it properly when it reaches his hands. He did not actually reply to Lodge until 1582, when he devoted a large portion of Playes 1 This view receives support from Lodge's words, ' the godly and reverent that had to deale in the cause, misliking it, forbad the publishing.' (Alarum against Usurers, Dedication.)