Joseph Hall was an English bishop, satirist and moralist. His contemporaries knew him as a devotional writer, and a high-profile controversialist of the early 1640s. In church politics, he tended in fact to a middle way.
Detail of an engraving by John Payne (1628)
The Dolphin Inn, Norwich, in the building where Hall had his palace from 1643 to 1647
Title page of Joseph Hall's Virgidemiarum, 1597.
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.
1867 edition of Punch, a ground-breaking British magazine of popular humour, including a great deal of satire of the contemporary, social, and political scene
A satire by Angelo Agostini to Revista Illustrada mocking the lack of interest from Emperor Pedro II of Brazil in politics toward the end of his reign
"Le satire e l'epistole di Q. Orazio Flacco", printed in 1814
The satirical papyrus at the British Museum