In addition to its classics and new commissions, Shakespeare's Globe now revives a more recent play with Helen Edmundson's verse drama
The Heresy of Love, which makes for a good fit with the theatre's current "Justice & Mercy" season: Its story of a strict regime reinforcing lapsed rules and clashing with a nun resonates with
Measure for Measure, while the Catholic Church using the threat of damnation to pull rank on secular powers has echoes in
King John. The cast, meanwhile, is largely that of the current
As You Like It, although they've gone to one of the Globe's past Rosalinds for the lead: Edmundson's play is inspired by the true story of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Naomi Frederick,) a 17th Century Mexican nun, also a much-loved poet and playwright, who became a close friend of the Spanish Viceroy's wife (Ellie Piercy,) and was commissioned to write plays for court occasions.
