The narrator takes a voyage on the ship Fantasia, in the southern seas, visiting the lands of Crapulia, Viraginia, Moronia and Lavernia (populated by gluttons, nags, fools and thieves, respectively).

[2]: 176 Mundus alter is a satirical description of London, with some criticism of the Roman Catholic Church, and is said to have furnished Jonathan Swift with hints for Gulliver's Travels.

[7] Hall's authorship had been an open secret, however, and in 1642 John Milton used it to attack him during the Smectymnuus controversy, employing the argument that the work lacked the constructive approach taken in More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis.

Andrea McCrea describes Hall's interactions with Robert Dallington, and then Healey, against the background of a few years of the pace-setting culture of the court of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Healey had noble patronage, and Hall's position with respect to the princely court culture was revealed as close to that of the king, placing him as an outsider rather than in the new group of movers and shakers.