The premature death of her father when Jodelle was only four years old forced her mother, Marie Drouet, to take care of the education of her children, Étienne and his sister.

Her maternal uncle, Étienne de Passavant, who owned a large collection of books, seems to have been the one who ignited Jodelle's taste for literature.

He stayed in Lyon to 1550, then he settled in Paris where he became friends with Jean Antoine de Baïf, Nicolas Denisot and Remy Belleau.

Jodelle aimed at creating a classical drama that should be in every respect different from the moralities and soties that then occupied the French stage, his first play, Cléopâtre captive, was represented before the court at the hôtel de Reims in 1552.

Jodelle himself took the title role, and the cast included his friends Remy Belleau and Jean Bastier de La Péruse, in honour of the play's success the friends organized a ceremony inspired by pagan rites called Pompe du Bouc [fr] at Arcueil when a goat garlanded with flowers was led in procession and presented to the author.

Jodelle received five hundred pounds from Charles IX of France in 1572, but continued to fall into debt, and he died in poverty in July 1573, in a hovel on rue Champ-Fleury2.

It was Charles de La Mothe who, after the poet's death, had his Œuvres et melanges poëtiques printed (Paris, N. Chesneau and M. Patisson, 1574).