SOURCE: Müller-Schwefe, Gerhard. “Joseph Hall's Characters of Vertues and Vices: Notes Toward a Revaluation.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 14, no. 2 (summer 1972): 235-51.

In this essay, Muller-Schwefe argues that Hall's opus can be viewed as “a document of his sober judgment of man.” The critic then maintains that Hall's Characters of Vertues and Vices is not a mere exercise in abstract moralizing, but rather an astute examination of human nature.

Much has been done during recent years to make the works of even minor seventeenth-century authors available in reliable editions. Most of Joseph Hall's works, however, have still to be studied in the “new edition revised and corrected, with some additions” which Philip Wynter provided in 1863 and which has been made accessible again in a recent facsimilc reprint.¹ Wynter offered what he thought to be “an accurate and faithful text.” His trust in its authenticity was based...