Hall, Joseph | Richard A. McCabe (essay date 1982)
Richard A. McCabe (essay date 1982)
SOURCE: McCabe, Richard A. “The Virgidemiarum.” In Joseph Hall: A Study in Satire and Meditation, pp. 29-72. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
[In this essay, McCabe maintains that Virgidemiarum is a seminal work in which Hall sets out to satirize Elizabethan social and moral attitudes from a Puritan perspective. The critic further demonstrates that Hall masterfully employed a strict classical form of satire to protest social injustice and moral turpitude.]
I First adventure, with fool-hardie might To tread the steps of perilous despight: I first adventure: follow me who list, And be the second English Satyrist.(1)
The publication of the Martin Marprelate tracts in the late 1580s marked the beginning of a new era in Elizabethan satire. Born of a deeply-rooted dissatisfaction with the Anglican Church, these tracts seriously damaged the fragile ‘Elizabethan compromise’, and...
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