The Virgin Martyr

The Virgin Martyr is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Thomas Dekker and Philip Massinger, and first published in 1622. It constitutes a rare instance in Massinger's canon in which he collaborated with a member of the previous generation of English Renaissance dramatists — those who began their careers in the 1590s, the generation of Shakespeare, Lyly, Marlowe and Peele.

The play was licensed for performance on 6 October 1620; the license refers to a "reforming" of the play, which has been taken to indicate an element of censorship. The work was reportedly staged at the Red Bull Theatre.

The play was popular, and was revived during the Restoration era, in 1661 and 1668, when it was seen by Samuel Pepys. John Dryden was influenced by the Dekker/Massinger play in writing his Tyrannick Love, or The Royal Martyr (1669).

The Virgin Martyr was published in quarto in 1622, with subsequent quarto editions in 1631, 1651, and 1661. The 1661 quarto, a reprint of the 1651 text, was "the only play by Massinger to be printed without alteration during the Restoration period."

Scholars have disputed the nature of that collaboration: it has been suggested that the extant text may be a revision by Massinger of the lost play Diocletian (1594). Others have doubted this hypothesis, since it supposes that Dekker wrote the lost Diocletian, a conclusion for which there is no evidence. And since Diocletian is a secondary figure in The Virgin Martyr, it can make as much sense to suppose that the two are completely different plays.

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