In 1598, Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia mentions him with Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Abraham Fraunce, and others as the "best for pastorall", but no pastorals of Gosson's are extant.
Anthony à Wood places this earlier and assigns the termination of his tutorship indirectly to his animosity against the stage, which apparently wearied his patron of his company.
Gosson took holy orders, was made lecturer of the parish church at Stepney (1585), and was presented by Queen Elizabeth I to the rectory of Great Wigborough, Essex, which he exchanged in 1600 for St Botolph's, Bishopsgate.
An anti-theatrical writer, Gosson by his own confession wrote plays, for he speaks of Catiline's Conspiracies as a "Pig of mine own Sowe."
Gosson justified his attack on the grounds of the disorder which the love of melodrama and of vulgar comedy was introducing into the social life of London.