ABSTRACT
When Joseph Hall wrote Characters of Vertuesand Vices, he professed that he patterned his anatomy of moral and ethical types after the characters of Theophrastus, "that ancient Master of Morality." The characters, in fact, exhibit the planned toning-down of ethical qualities that Hall had previously treated with the vituperative harshness characteristic of the Renaissance definition of satire. The meditative structure of the whole gives an overall impression of controlled energies moving towards a solution. Hall's formula for the character was a moving and inventive one. But it held little possibility for further development along such spare and gnomic lines. The tendency in later practitioners of the character was to expand its form and its interests, thereby bringing it more in accord with the social and literary forces of the age.
