Critics who consider the play crude have favored an early date, and thought of the work as Webster's first venture into the genre of tragedy.
Webster's play was published late: it was entered into the Stationers' Register on 13 May 1654 by bookseller Richard Marriot, and appeared in print before the end of that year.
[3] Webster was not the first English Renaissance playwright to dramatize the story of Appius Claudius Crassus and Verginia; another play with the same title and subject matter had been published in 1576, as the work of "R. B.," probably a Richard Bower.
Webster's play was revived during the Restoration era, in an adaptation by Thomas Betterton called The Roman Virgin, or The Unjust Judge that was acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1670, and was printed in 1679.
Later dramatists also dealt with the story: John Dennis's Appius and Virginia was staged at Drury Lane in 1709 (Betterton was Virginius again).
In the opening scene, Appius Claudius is offered membership among the Decemviri; he feigns humility and claims unworthiness for the high office, and accepts only when faced with the penalty for refusal, which is banishment.
The Senate breaks up, and Virginius pauses only briefly to see his family before returning to the camp, where he manages to stifle the mutiny by the force of his commanding personality.
Marcus reveals a bold plan to win the girl: he will use false evidence and perjured testimony to claim that Virginia is not really her father's daughter, but in fact a "bond-slave" belonging to himself.
Icilius is appalled that Virginius has killed his daughter ("thou hast turn'd / My bridal to a funeral"), and the two have a debate on the intertwined considerations of law and justice and honor.
He brings Virginia's body through the streets; the Roman populace, confronted by the sight, becomes passionate for Appius's downfall, and Virginius's resolve is strengthened again.
For Dugdale Sykes, the play is "Firmly constructed, lucid in style, and with a simple, coherent plot," which "is utterly unlike The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfy [sic], those profounder and more poetic tragedies...."[5] Other critics have rendered harsher judgements, regarding the play's black-and-white morality as simplistic and uninteresting compared to Webster's other, more complex tragedies.