Of course, there are critics who will hold that Marlowe's Christians, in some respects, are more life-like than Shakespeare's. Perhaps if "The Merchant of Venice" had been written while Marlowe was alive, he would have challenged Shakespeare to uphold that in matters of conduct where money interests were involved there was any marked distinction between the morals of the believer and the unbeliever. Marlowe might have contended that out of one hundred Christians ninety-nine would act as his Governor of Malta had done, though he was a Knight of St. John. It might not be impossible for a Christian to persuade himself that money taken forcibly from the infidel Jew, as a tribute, could justly be withheld from the infidel Turk to whom it was due, and that it was folly to hesitate in cutting the cord that would let the infidel Jew into the burning cauldron, instead of the infidel Turk for whom it was designed, especially when one hundred thousand pounds of the citizens' money would in that way be saved. As a mere worldly truism the words that Barabas utters, when his daughter changes her faith, have a deeper significance than the "noble platitudes" of Lorenzo and Jessica: "She that varies from me in belief, Gives great presumption that she loves me not; Or loving, does mislike of something done." Shakespeare, probably, would have answered Marlowe's objection with the assurance that there still remained the odd Christian out of every hundred to be reckoned with, and that he himself was more interested in showing the world what men ought to be like than what they actually were. But if Shakespeare preferred to live outside the walls of reality, he did so only in imagination, for he must have had a very practical knowledge of men's dealings with each other. No doubt our great dramatist was not eager to break with conventions or to imitate Marlowe by saying unpalatable truths about the Christians at a time when he himself was still seeking the favour of Elizabeth's Court. THE AUTHORS OF "KING HENRY THE EIGHTH."[8]