The Power of the Martyr's Witness to Convert Onlookers

Campion's play combines this emblematic image with a surrounding narrative text via the lines spoken by the actors. The kind of image of martyrdom that Gervaisius provides in his final agonies is intoxicating. It's something that seizes the onlooker with a lost emulate and perform it himself. So it's the power of the martyrs as invested in their relics to convert that the play is preoccupied with.