““What makes Marlowe’s defiance and even D’Amville’s anticlerical contempt compelling is their moral edge. And in their very different ways, Acosta, Coornhert, Eleazar Duncan, Tourneur’s Sebastian and Shakespeare’s secularised ethical vision suggest that it was not only possible, but even natural for the unbelief of anger to be fired by its own moral code. The Church wanted angry unbelievers to stick to their role as villains. Instead, they were beginning to bid for the moral high ground.””
