SOURCE: "The Critic's War," in Thomas Lodge, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1967, pp. 16-28.

In the following excerpt, Rae provides background for the literary dispute between Lodge and Stephen Gosson, and explains the nature of Elizabethan imitation.

… [Before] discussing Lodge's first work, we must consider the religious forces and Elizabethan methods in writing which influenced him. In the 1570's, the Puritan interests in England began attacks upon traditional entertainments, especially the theater. But the label Puritan is misleading since it is as difficult to sort out and define a Puritan in this era as it is to characterize an Existentialist in ours. Literary historians and critics use the term indiscriminately, but modern studies of Puritanism in literature that have grown out of Milton scholarship have shown the necessity for care in reaching a definition. We forget, for instance, that the Puritan movement under Queen Elizabeth was a reform wholly within...