ATAHUALLPA: Explain love.
DE NIZZA: It is not known in your kingdom. At home we can say to our ladies: "I love you", or to our native earth. It means we rejoice in their lives. But a man cannot say this to the woman he must marry at twenty-five; or to the strip of land allotted to him at birth which he must till till he dies. Love must be free, or else it alters away. Command it to your court: it will send a deputy. Let God order it to fill our hearts, it becomes useless to him. It is stronger than iron: yet in a fist of force it melts. It is a coin that sparkles in the hand; yet in the pocket it turns to rust. Love is the only door from the prison of ourselves. It is the eagerness of God to enter that prison, to take on pain, and imagine lust, so that the torn soldier, or the spent lecher, can call out in his defeat: "You know this too, so help me from it".

The Royal Hunt of the Sun, Peter Schaffer, 1964