Dramatic Nostalgia and Spectacular Conversion in Dekker and Massinger’s The Virgin Martyr

Critical debates about Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger’s The Virgin Martyr (1620) often center on the play’s Protestant or Catholic sympathies, but the play’s treatment of religious conversion complicates that debate. The play portrays serial or vacillating converts who not only defy easy doctrinal categorization, but also raise questions about the nature and verifiability of conversion. Namely, the play critiques early modern conversion culture by warning about the abuses of pseudoreasonable religious rhetoric and, finally, by embracing a nostalgically visionary paradigm of religious change.