 By upholding Massinissa’s reputation, at play’s end, Sophonisba becomes the “Wonder of Women” and the “just shame of men.”

The plot is highly sensationalist and melodramatic, and the play features several scenes of high stylization, martial pomp, and ritual.Critics have often been harsh in their appraisals of "The Wonder of Women".In his brief introduction to the play, editor H. Harvey Wood even declares that “[Marston’s] style in "Sophonisba" is almost grotesquely strained and inflated in an attempt to match the dignity of the subject and the import of the occasion”  In the address "To the General Reader," prefixed to the print edition of the play, Marston explains that he has written the play as a poetic statement, not a factually accurate history.