ABSTRACT
The Bishops' ban represents, as Debora Shuger notes, "the single most sweeping act of censorship during the entire period from 1558 to 1641", and one of the most ambiguous. Precisely why the Bishops issued the document on June 1st, 1599 is unclear, however, their desire to silence the satiric perspective is by no means a novel impulse. Despite its customary pose as an insignificant literary form, satire frequently demonstrates its transhistorical ability to disturb its sociopolitical context, as evidenced by the frequent censorious reactions of authorities tasked with regulating forms of representation. The Bishops' ban must have been a significant notice to the Stationers Company of their failure to regulate a range of forms of social representation coming from London's printers, who would now be subjected to intense oversight. The Juvenalian satires that appear most prominently in the Bishops' recall and burn order certainly represent the most egregious offenders, those that provoked the majority of the government's "ire".
