Shakespeare and Marlowe: The Jew of Malta (Play discussion)
About the event
Dear members,
Written roughly seven years before *The Merchant of Venice*, it is difficult not to read Marlowe’s play without noticing its striking connections with Shakespeare’s work and considering Marlowe’s possible influence.
This month, we continue our exploration of Shakespeare in conversation with Christopher Marlowe by turning to *The Jew of Malta*. At the heart of our discussion will be two of the most provocative figures of the Elizabethan stage: Marlowe’s Barabas and Shakespeare’s Shylock among other things.
Reading the plays together gives us the opportunity to look beyond their obvious similarities and ask what is deliberate and meaningful in the ways the two playwrights distinguish their Jewish protagonists. How do Marlowe and Shakespeare differently approach prejudice, vengeance, money, faith, family, and the position of the outsider? Where does one playwright echo the other, and where do their dramatic voices sharply diverge? Hope you can make it! Maryama Antoine
About the Play: *The Jew of Malta* (full title: *The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta*) is a play by Christopher Marlowe, written around 1589 or 1590. The plot primarily revolves around a Maltese Jewish merchant named Barabas. The story combines religious conflict, intrigue, and revenge, set against the backdrop of the struggle for supremacy between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean, which plays out on the island of Malta. There has been extensive debate about the play’s portrayal of Jews and how Elizabethan audiences would have viewed it.
Plot: The play opens with the character Machiavel, based on Niccolò Machiavelli, introducing “the tragedy of a Jew.” Machiavel expresses the cynical view that power is amoral, declaring: “I count religion but a childish toy, / And hold there is no sin but ignorance.” Barabas begins the play in his counting-house. After being stripped of his wealth for protesting against the Governor of Malta’s seizure of the property of the island’s entire Jewish population in order to pay tribute to the threatening Turks, he develops a murderous streak. With the help of his slave Ithamore, he tricks the Governor’s son and his friend into fighting over the affections of his daughter, Abigail. When they both die in a duel, Barabas becomes further incensed when Abigail, horrified by what her father has done, runs away to become a Christian nun.
In retribution, Barabas poisons Abigail along with the entire nunnery. He then strangles an old friar, Barnadine, who tries to make him repent for his sins, and frames another friar, Jacomo, for Barnadine’s murder. After Ithamore falls in love with a prostitute who conspires with her criminal companion to blackmail and expose Barabas—after Ithamore drunkenly tells them everything his master has done—Barabas poisons all three of them. When he is caught, Barabas drinks “of poppy and cold mandrake juice” so that he will be left for dead, and then conspires with the enemy Turks to besiege the city.
When Barabas is eventually appointed governor by his new allies, he switches sides and allies himself with the Christians once again. Having devised a trap for the Turkish soldiers in which they are to be destroyed by gunpowder, he then sets a trap for the Turkish prince himself and his men, hoping to boil them alive in a hidden cauldron. At the crucial moment, however, the former governor double-crosses Barabas and causes him to fall into his own trap. The play ends with the Christian governor holding the Turkish prince hostage until reparations are paid. Barabas curses them as he burns.
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