This is a much more developed and mature piece of writing than Dr. Faustus. It is longer and better-written. In addition, there are numerous well-developed characters like Barabas and his daughter Abigail. However, as you would expect, this play is ripe with anti-Semitism and Barabas is totally unredeemable and his servant is even worse. The plot is better developed than in Faustus, but I feel the ending is a bit rushed. It still is not of the caliber of The Merchant of Venice, but it stands up well.

Imagine a version of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in which Shylock is the main character. That's sort of what you'll get with this play, which indeed was a huge influence on Shakespeare. To put it out there, this is one of those cases where reading from a post-Holocaust perspective certainly brings the anti-Semitic elements of the text to the foreground, but really none of the monotheistic religions escape Marlowe's indictment. Barabas is a deliciously evil character and the plot remains exciting due to all the deception and intrigue and the fact that after Act II, characters getting murdered left and right.

Originally published on my blog here in March 1999.Christopher Marlowe's play is certainly not in tune with the spirit of the second half of the twentieth century, with its portrayal of the Jew, Barabas, as the epitome of deceit and treachery. In his introduction to this edition, Peter J. Smith quotes Barry Kyle, who directed a revival in 1987, as originally thinking that the anti-Semitism would make it unstageable. He lessened the impact of this aspect of the play by using a clever trick to make the Christian leader of Malta appear to be the really unpleasant character.In some ways, the Jewishness of Barabas is not important. He is explicitly meant to be someone who follows the teachings of Machiavelli (who appears in the prologue as Machevill, "Make-Evil"), whose analysis of politics was thought to be subversive and diabolical. On the surface, there is no particular reason whey the practitioner of his theories needs to be a Jew. In fact, the major reason in the plot for Barabas' faith is to provide the way in which he is put into the position of desiring revenge - through a discriminatory tax confiscating large amounts of his property to pay tribute to the Turks. His faith is clearly important to him, at least at the beginning of the play, because he refuses to become a Christian to avoid the tax, unlike the other Jews on the island (and unlike Shylock who reluctantly accepts baptism at the end of The Merchant of Venice).In the end, there is really no escaping the anti-Semitism in this play. English people should perhaps not forget which country it was that first forced Jews to wear a yellow star and then expelled them, which country it was that had major anti-Jewish riots following accusations of ritual murder of children - this was medieval England. We should face up to our past, and the most positive way we can respond to this play is to let it shame us.

Ay, daughter, for religion / Hides many mischiefs from suspicion.Christopher Marlowes ferocious play The Jew of Malta, which was written around 1589 and 1590, is generally said to have influenced Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice, but I must say that having the latter play at the back of my mind while reading Marlowes revenge tragedy, my admiration for the Malta play was, on the whole, rather dampened for there are worlds between these two plays. But maybe, it is not quite fair, anyway, to compare Marlowe and Shakespeare since the latter was simply the epitome of the master-playwright even though some of Shakespeares own plays did fizzle.Whereas in The Merchant of Venice we have, in Shylock, a tragic character, who allows himself to indulge in his desire for vengeance on a member of Christian society that has repeatedly wronged and humiliated him, only to find that those Christians have a way of turning their laws against him, Marlowe, in The Jew of Malta offers us, in Barabas, an inveterate villain, quite a caricature at that, who rushes from one spectacular crime to another, poisoning a whole nunnery to get even with his daughter, who converted to Christianity, inveigling the Governors son into a lethal duel with another youth, helping the Turks invade Malta and later trying to betray them, in turn, to the Christians. It may be argued that his being dispossessed of all his goods by the hypocritical Governor Ferneze, who wants to pay the tribute due to the Turks with the money of the Maltese Jews, not touching the wealth of the Christians, starts his private revenge spree against virtually anyone around him and that he therefore is depicted as the victim of injustice and prejudice but unlike Shylock, Barabas is no figure to evoke sympathy for he revels too wickedly in the evil he plots and commits, and then there is a highly exuberant passage like this, where he compares his own penchant to treason and crime with his newly-found servant Ithamores inclinations to vice:As for myself, I walk abroad o' nights,And kill sick people groaning under walls:Sometimes I go about and poison wells;And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves,I am content to lose some of my crowns,That I may, walking in my gallery,See 'em go pinion'd along by my door.Being young, I studied physic, and beganTo practice first upon the Italian;There I enrich'd the priests with burials,And always kept the sexton's arms in ure 80With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells:And, after that, was I an engineer,And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany,Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems:Then, after that, was I an usurer,And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,And tricks belonging unto brokery,I fill'd the gaols with bankrupts in a year,And with young orphans planted hospitals;And every moon made some or other mad,And now and then one hang himself for grief,Pinning upon his breast a long great scrollHow I with interest tormented him.But mark how I am blest for plaguing them;I have as much coin as will buy the town.But tell me now, how hast thou spent thy time?Frankly speaking, this is not only anti-Semitic to the core, since it includes virtually any anti-Jewish stereotype of the time, its only potentially redeeming quality being that it is so blown out of all proportion that one may deem it a satire on anti-Jewish stereotypes afloat at those times, but it also makes it impossible for the audience to establish any link of sympathy with Barabas, of seeing him as a real human being.In fact, I could not help thinking that the major intention of Marlowes here was to provoke his contemporaries by presenting all religions as hardly more than an excuse for the execution of villainy. With the possible exception of Barabass daughter Abigail, there is no single character in the whole play whose actions are not motivated by selfishness and even though Marlowe must have chuckled up his sleeve by having Macchiavelli introduce his play with a little cynical prologue, a calculated affront, nothing could be farther from Macchiavelli than the actions of most of the characters in the play, especially those of Barabas and Ithamore, in that while for the abhorred Italian breach of promise, dissimulation and ruthlessness were means to an end, Barabas and Ithamore wallow in them for their own sake, and to the actual detriment of their ends. The only person to adopt Macchiavellian principles is probably Ferneze, the Governor of Malta, which is probably why he will survive in the end.The Jew of Malta was the first Marlowe play I actually read, and while it might be breath-taking to see it staged, I definitely found it grossly inferior to Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice in that it does not give us any insight into human nature apart from the rather superficial Every man fend for himself! , and in that it even seems to further anti-Semitic stereotypes, or at least to be making use of them in order to entertain its audience. The plays desire to provoke at all costs, its half-baked use of Macchiavelli being one of its strategies to do so, seemed rather puerile to me, and its language was at no moment as overwhelming as that of the Bard.All in all, the calculated, gore-laden provocations and the overall shallowness of the play made me wonder whether Marlowe really had anything worthwhile to say to his day and age or whether he was not rather an Elizabethan Tarantino, doomed to be eclipsed by any real artist coming their way.

Among the comments late in the introductory notes are two important thoughts.1 That there may be no original manuscripts of Marlowes plays,2. The Jew of Malta might be a farce rather than a tragedy.This edition The Dover Thrift Edition) of Christopher Marlowes The Jew of Malta is sufficiently over wrought to be farcical, but too much of the language is flat and dull. The net result lacks enough life to sustain a laugh. Scenes transition poorly and plot development is so whatever is the opposite of seamless that this could easily be chopped together from many earlier versions with changes made by many writers looking to serve many audiences.I came to this play hoping to see an artist who was the mentor to and possible superior of William Shakespeare. Very little of the dialogue ever achieves the beauty of the Bard. The foot notes asked us to consider the following Marlowe line against the Shakespeare version: But stay what light shines yonder in the EastThe loadstar of my life, If Abigail.First the speaker is Abigails father, and not her lover.if Abigail reads like a transcription error from some earlier draft.Those are minor problems.The entire first line is leaden and unhappy. And finally Lodestar sounds too much like mill stone or concrete overshoes, just not anything to suggest that the daughter is the light or delight of her fathers soul,Consider what Shakespeare does with the line I do not doubt he stole:But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Lo rather than stay, surprise rather than a command to stop. In the original Yonder leaps out as something that would fit better in a bad country western song. The later use fits in naturally and sounds softer in the ear. Juliet is light, lighting Romeos life and warming his heart. The comparison is clearly one an inspired lover might invent, not some creepy old man talking about his daughter.Numerous footnotes take the place of missing stage directions. Scene shifts are frequently lost or obviously missing. Plot development seem layered on rather than deliberately designed in. Ultimately this is a mess and unpleasant to read. The script at barely 59 pages was a struggle to finish.I refuse to believe that this edition is what made Christopher Marlowes reputation. Over 40 years ago I read The Tragical History of Doctor FaustusThe Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. Perhaps it is time I revisited it if only to give the man with Kits reputation a chance to be better represented.