Her innocent, yet promiscuous, desire mocks Prynne's anti-theatrical conviction that the theatre is a hotbed of sexual encounters; 'that stage-playes
devirginate unmarried persons, especially beautiful, tender virgins who resort unto them (which I would our female play-haunters and their Parents would consider): that they defile their soules with impure carnall lusts; and so let in eternall death upon them'.
This may have been the reason why Chapman's addition found it necessary, in the third Sestiad, to compare "fair Hero, left
devirginate" to the situation of Cadiz after the 1595 English campaign, and say that the girl in her post-coital state "Even to herself a stranger, was much like / Th'Iberian city that war's hand did strike / by English force in princely Essex's guide" In Paul's Churchyard, Marlowe was expected to come up to date and topical even in his death, and Chapman's additions helped provide the requisite edge.
What, for instance, is William Prynne describing, or imagining, when he writes (in Histriomastix [1633], 340-41) that events on stage "
devirginate" maidens in the audience?