While primarily remembered for composing the story that would provide the source for Shakespeare's "As You Like It", Thomas Lodge was a prolific author in his own right, who made prose fiction his chief concern. Son of a one-time London mayor, Lodge began his career as a lawyer but quickly found literature more attractive, perhaps because of the encouragement of his friend Robert Greene. Lodge was also a playwright. His first published work appears to be "A Defense of Stage Plays" (1580), an answer to the attack by Stephen Gosson, but the majority of his efforts were devoted to prose romances, such as "The Delectable History of Forbonius and Prisceria" (1584), "Scilla's Metamorphosis" (1589), and "Robert, Duke of Normandy" (1591). ''Rosalynde" (1590) is, like Sidney's "Arcadia," a pastoral romance, a form popular with urban Elizabethans for its idealized depiction of rural otium.
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