‘The ribald roistering on the Swan’s stage during House of Desire — a play packed with sexual scheming and farcical naughtiness — makes it very hard to credit that this is a work penned by a nun.” Thus ran the first sentence of my review of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival of Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz’s best-known play, staged as part of Stratford’s Spanish Golden Age season in 2004.

Among those impressed by Nancy Meckler’s knockabout production was playwright Helen Edmundson. It prompted her to delve into the life of the remarkable Sor Juana. Now, eight years later, the fruits of her research are on display in the new play The Heresy of Love, which can be seen at the Swan — with Ms Meckler again in charge — until March 9.

As with another of the theatre’s current offerings — David Edgar’s Written on the Heart, concerning the making of the English Bible — the play demonstrates that gripping drama can be fashioned as readily from ideas as from action. The religious conflict arising from Sister Juana’s literary activities — much of it associated with the fact that she is both a woman and in holy orders — is compelling to watch.

While the brilliant and likable sister (Catherine McCormack) has initially been secure in the support of the church and the state — through her influential royal friend and patron the Vicereine, (Catherine Hamilton, suitably serene) — this alters very quickly with the arrival in Mexico of a new hard-line archbishop, Aguiar Y Seijas (Stephen Boxer). A hellfire-fearing devotee of fasting and self-mortification, he has no time for theatre — “I do not attend plays. I do not attend bullfights, cockfights . . . Nor do I expect to hear that my clergy do so”.

The scene in which his views are spelled out to Juana’s good-sort confessor, Father Antonio (Geoffrey Beevers), and the wily and manipulative Bishop Santa Cruz (Raymond Coulthard) gets the play off to a cracking start, before the drama moves in some surprising directions.

One important thread of the story chronicles the downfall of Juana’s pert and pleasing niece Angelica (Sarah Ovens) whose innocence is exploited by the heartless aristocrat — are there any other sort? — Don Hernando (Simon Thorp).

Towering in his high-heeled shoes and gorgeous finery, the latter is rivalled only by Daniel Stewart’s Viceroy as the most magnificent sight seen lately on the Stratford stage.

The Heresy of Love continues until March 9. Box office: tel. 0844 800 1114 (www.rsc.org.uk).