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 precipitated the censoring of the Puritan press and the famous Star Chamber trials of 1591 to...