The Jew of Malta

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The Jew of Malta is a play by Christopher Marlowe, probably written in 1589 or 1590.

The first recorded performance was in 1592. The play was entered in the Stationer's Register in May, 1594, but the earliest surviving edition was printed in 1633. This edition contains prologues and epilogues written by Thomas Heywood for a revival. Heywood is also sometimes thought to have revised the play. Corruption and inconsistencies in the 1633 quarto, particularly in the second half, may be evidence of revision or alteration of the text (Bevington & Rasmussen, 1995:xxviii-xxix).

The main character of the title, Barabas the Jew, is a complex character likely to provoke mixed reactions in an audience. Like Marlowe's other protagonists, such as Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus, he dominates the play's action. There is much debate about the play's portrayal of Jews and how Elizabethan audiences would have viewed it.

The plot is a highly original story of religious conflict, intrigue and revenge set against a backdrop of the struggle for supremacy between Spain and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. The Jew of Malta is considered to have been a major influence on William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

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[edit] Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The play contains a prologue in which the writer Machiavelli, much hated by Elizabethan England, introduces "the tragedy of a Jew." The Jewish merchant in question, Barabas, is introduced as a man owning more wealth than all of Malta. When Turkish ships arrive to demand tribute, however, Barabas's wealth is seized and he is left penniless. Incensed, he begins a campaign to engineer the downfall of the Maltese governor who robbed him. With the aid of his daughter, Abigail, he recovers some of his former assets and buys a Turkish slave, Ithamore, who appears to hate Christians as much as Barabas. Barabas then, in revenge for the robbery, uses his daughter's beauty to embitter the governor's son and his friend against each other, leading to a duel in which they both die. When Abigail learns of Barabas's role in the plot, she consigns herself to a nunnery, only to be poisoned (along with all of the nuns) by Barabas and Ithamore for becoming a Christian. The two go on to kill a couple of friars who threaten to divulge their previous crimes. Ithamore himself, however, is lured into disclosing his secrets and blackmailing Barabas by a beautiful prostitute and her criminal friend. Barabas poisons all of them in revenge, but not before the governor is apprised of his deeds. Barabas escapes execution by feigning death, and then helps an advancing Turkish army to sack Malta, for which he is awarded governorship of the city.

Barabas then turns on his Turkish allies, however, and promises the former governor of the city to kill all of the Turks and return control of the city to Christians. Part of Barabas's plan is carried out, but as he is readying his final plans to drop the Turkish leaders into a giant cauldron of boiling water, the Maltese governor springs his trap early and Barabas is undone by his own device. As he falls, he cries, "Help me, Christians!" The Christians merely look on, however; the play ends with Barabas's death and the capture of the Turkish leaders.

[edit] Significance

Due to the religious conflict within the play, as with Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, the unremitting evil of The Jew of Malta's anti-hero leaves the play open to accusations of anti-Semitism. However, like Shakespeare's Shylock, Barabas also shows evidence of humanity (albeit rarely), particularly when he protests against the blatant unfairness of the governor's edict that the Turkish tribute will be paid entirely by Malta's Jewish population. It is because of Barabas's protests that he is stripped of all he has- and consequently becomes a sort of monster. He has more asides than any other character, making his isolation from the other characters, including his fellow Jews, all the more evident, and he constantly has to operate in what he does alone: even his daughter becomes detatched from him before long, and Ithamore, too, soon loses interest in his former loyalty towards his master. In his first meeting with Ithamore he has his most famous speech that begins: "I walk abroad a-nights/ And kill sick people groaning under walls", and follows this with over twenty more lines about various murders and robberies he has apparently performed. Nothing in his personlity implies that so underhand a character would suddenly come out with the truth as he does, and it is highly possible that he is not even speaking the truth at all: in a sense it is a play about his transforming into, rather than actually being from the very beginning, the very thing that anti-Semites all around him portray him as. Indeed, it could be for this reason that Machievelli, in the Prologue, describes it as the "tragedy" of a Jew.

Meanwhile, very few of the play's other characters show significant redeeming qualities. The play ridicules Christian monks and nuns for engaging in forbidden sexual practices, and portrays a pair of friars trying to outbid each other to bring Barabas (and his wealth) into their order. Malta's Christian governor, in addition to his unfair treatment of the city's Jews, is revealed to be a grasping opportunist who seizes any chance to get an advantage. The Turkish slave Ithamore is somewhat idiotic and has no qualms about getting drunk when offered wine (and sex) by a prostitute (quite apart from his role in multiple murder), and aside from him there are the Turkish invaders who plan to make the city's defenders (the Knights of Malta) into galley slaves.

The play is unusual[citation needed] in that it brings together characters of three religious groups--Christians, Jews, and the Turks, who are Muslim--and portrays them in constant enmity with one another. It satirizes self-contented morality and suggests that, in the end, all religious groups are equally likely to engage in violent and selfish acts, regardless of their professed moral teachings. This irony comes to a head when Barabas, falling into his own boiling cauldron, cries out to the Christian and Turkish onlookers for mercy. Barabas, of course, would have shown the Turks no mercy had they fallen prey to his trap, and yet expects help from his erstwhile Christian victims and intended Turkish ones. Meanwhile, though, he has been derided throughout the play by Christians for not showing proper Christian charity, and yet the play's Christians show him no mercy when he is in need of help. The hypocrisy is made all the more potent, when, after the Turkish leader's galley-slaves and soldiers have all been massacred in an explosion of gunpowder (also created by Barabas) the Christians then take the remaining Turks prisoner in Malta, just as the murderous Barabas they formerly berated would have done- and the govenor states that they should give thanks to Heaven as a result. The ending refuses to allow any group in the play to emerge blameless.

[edit] On stage

The Jew of Malta was a success in its first recorded performance at the Rose theatre in early 1592, when Edward Alleyn played the lead role, and it was apparently revived in 1594. It gained significant notoriety due to Marlowe's arrest for heresy and subsequent violent death in 1593 [citation needed], and the 1594 execution of Dr. Rodrigo Lopez, Queen Elizabeth's Jewish physician. The play remained popular for the next fifty years, until England's theatres were closed in 1642 (see English Renaissance theatre)[citation needed].

The play has rarely been staged since then[citation needed], but there have been a number of modern productions; in recent years, Barabas has been played by Alun Armstrong at the RSC and by Ian McDiarmid at the Almeida.

[edit] Trivia

Partial evidence for the play's date of composition comes from its reference to the death of the Duke of Guise, which occurred on December 23, 1588.

The name Barabas comes from the Biblical figure of Barabbas, a notorious bandit and murderer. Barabbas, rather than Jesus Christ, was released by Pontius Pilate at the behest of a mob (Matt. 27: 16-26).

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[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

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