Yes indeed. He sets up a complex tableau of who is doing what to whom (usually archbishops, vicars, or rich lords doing horrid things to servants or street urchins_, and then while every one is pumping away, they deliver 20-30 page long soliloquies on why it is just and proper that those with power do whatever the heck they want to with the powerless, for such is God's will, etc. Pointed and vicious satire though it be, a single 100-page novel would have sufficed to get the point across.