The Jew of Malta, anti-Semitism, and Marlowe vs Shakespeare

1/ Could anyone read The Jew of Malta now without comparing it to The Merchant of Venice? I doubt it.

The difference is quite clear from the beginning. After the Prologue, spoken by Machevill (Machiavelli), Marlowe’s play begins with Barabas the Jew in his counting-house, surrounded by money and jewels. 

“BARABAS Thus trowls our fortune in by land and sea, 

And thus are we on every side enriched: 

These are the blessings promised to the Jews,

[…] Who hateth me but for my happiness?

Or who is honoured now but for his wealth? 

Rather had I a Jew be hated thus, 

Than pitied in a Christian poverty:

For I can see no fruits in all their faith, 

But malice, falsehood, and excessive pride,

Which methinks fits not their profession.

[…] They say we are a scattered nation:

I cannot tell, but we have scambled up

More wealth by far than those that brag of faith…”

(Act 1 scene 1)

The soliloquy goes on for some more, about wealth, wealth, wealth. Barabas doesn’t seem like a likable or subtle character, does he? 

But Barabas mentions the Christians’ “malice, falsehood, and excessive pride”, and Marlowe lets us see all that in the following scene as the Governor unjustly confiscates the property of all the Jews in Malta, especially Barabas for resisting, in order to pay money to the Turks. The scene, placed at the beginning of Marlowe’s play, is later echoed by the trial scene near the end of The Merchant of Venice.

Now look at this passage: 

“BARABAS […] We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please; 

And when we grin we bite; yet are our looks

As innocent and harmless as a lamb's.

I learned in Florence how to kiss my hand,

Heave up my shoulders when they call me dog,

And duck as low as any bare-foot friar,

Hoping to see them starve upon a stall,

Or else be gathered for in our synagogue;

That, when the offering-basin comes to me,

Even for charity I may spit into’t…”

(Act 2 scene 3) 

Compare it to this passage in The Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio and Antonio come to ask Shylock for money, and he responds: 

“SHYLOCK Signior Antonio, many a time and oft 

In the Rialto you have rated me 

About my moneys and my usances.

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug,

For suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe. 

You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog,

And spet upon my Jewish gabardine,

And all for use of that which is mine own.

Well then, it now appears you need my help. 

Go to, then. You come to me and you say, 

“Shylock, we would have moneys”—you say so, 

You that did void your rheum upon my beard

And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur

Over your threshold! Moneys is your suit. 

What should I say to you? Should I not say, 

“Hath a dog money? Is it possible

A cur can lend three thousand ducats?” Or 

Shall I bend low, and in a bondman’s key, 

With bated breath, and whisp’ring humbleness, 

Say this: 

“Fair sir, you spet on me on Wednesday last, 

You spurned me such a day, another time

You called me dog; and for these courtesies

I’ll lend you thus such moneys”?” 

(Act 1 scene 3) 

The difference is enormous. In Shylock’s speech, we can hear bitterness and anger at Antonio’s humiliating treatment of him; he’s mocking the hypocrisy of the Christians, who call him a dog and spit on him then come asking him for money. Shylock stands upright, he doesn’t degrade himself. Barabas on the other hand says “We Jews can fawn like spaniels when we please”. It is a shocking speech.

In The Jew of Malta, there’s no “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, no “I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys” speech. Almost everyone who talks about The Merchant of Venice mentions the first speech, but I think the second one goes even further in giving Shylock humanity and depth of feeling—he is heartbroken realising that his daughter has not only betrayed him but also carelessly exchanged the ring he got from his wife for a monkey. No such moment in The Jew of Malta. 

2/ Whatever you think about Shylock, he loves his daughter Jessica. From the beginning, Shylock demands a pound of flesh from Antonio as a bond, but I think the loss of his daughter is the thing that truly pushes him to extremity, the thing that makes him more vengeful and murderous towards the Christians. 

Does Barabas love his daughter Abigail?  

He makes her go back to the house, now a nunnery, and pretend to be a nun in order to retrieve his hidden gold. He forces his 14-year-old daughter to put on an act, to entrap two gentile men, including the one she loves, and get them to kill each other.

When Jessica leaves Shylock to marry a Christian and convert to Christianity, I feel pain for Shylock—Jessica is portrayed as a traitor, a thief, and a heartless daughter. When Abigail leaves Barabas and becomes a nun, I side with her—she is a sympathetic character, a good girl, and as Abigail says herself, Barabas may kill Lodowick to revenge on the governor (Lodowick’s father), but what reasons does he have for killing Mathias? 

I suppose not everyone would see Jessica the way I do—readers and theatregoers may have different opinions about Shylock’s daughter and perhaps different productions may have different approaches to the character—but I think everyone would agree that Abigail is portrayed as sympathetic and likable. She’s a type. Marlowe’s characters don’t have the subtlety or complexity of Shakespeare’s. Even if we want to be fair to Marlowe and not talk about Shakespeare’s mature plays, Adriana and Luciana in The Comedy of Errors have more depth, even Katherina and Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew (one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, and a farce) have more depth. Bianca, for example, is not as sweet and simple as she first seems.  

3/ This is how Barabas responds when Abigail joins the nunnery: 

“BARABAS O unhappy day, 

False, credulous, inconstant Abigail! 

But let ’em go: and, Ithamore, from hence

Ne’er shall she grieve me more with her disgrace;

Ne’er shall she live to inherit aught of mine,

Be blest of me, nor come within my gates,

But perish underneath my bitter curse,

Like Cain by Adam for his brother’s death.” 

(Act 3 scene 4) 

I’ll let you judge the character for yourself. 

Soon afterwards, Ithamore the slave comes back with some porridge and Barabas says: 

“BARABAS Very well, Ithamore; then now be secret;

And, for thy sake, whom I so dearly love,

Now shalt thou see the death of Abigail,

That thou mayst freely live to be my heir.”

(ibid.) 

That’s when I realised I had to approach The Jew of Malta differently, though I wasn’t sure how. There’s no humanity in Barabas. The character is all savagery.  

“ITHAMORE Do you not sorrow for your daughter’s death?

BARABAS No, but I grieve because she lived so long; 

An Hebrew born, and would become a Christian.” 

(Act 4 scene 1) 

4/ The main defence against the anti-Semitism charge, as I understand, is that everyone is terrible in the play, except Abigail. As T. W. Craik writes in the Introduction of my The New Mermaids copy, Abigail is the only character for whom Marlowe seems to have sympathy. Everyone else is hypocritical, cruel, and deceitful, and the conflict of the play begins when the Governor singles out the Jews to confiscate money from. 

“… Marlowe’s Jew is a villain, yet a villain who can (at the beginning, at least) make out a kind of moral case for himself by pointing to the duplicity of his enemies, and who can arouse our enthusiasm and glee by his zestful pursuit of ends which we fully recognize as villainous.” (Introduction)

I can’t help thinking that I personally would “enjoy” Barabas’s villainy more if his opponents were smarter. It isn’t so fun when he doesn’t have to try much and the victims are all gullible morons (till the end). 

5/ This is Barabas’s reaction when he is blackmailed by his slave Ithamore: 

“BARABAS [Aside] 

I am betrayed.—

’Tis not five hundred crowns that I esteem,

I am not moved at that: this angers me, 

That he who knows I love him as myself

Should write in this imperious vein. Why sir, 

You know I have no child, and unto whom

Should I leave all but unto Ithamore?” 

(Act 4 scene 3) 

You had a child, Barabas, but you killed her! 

This seems out of character. Throughout the play, he esteems nothing but his wealth and his religion/ Jewish identity. He doesn’t even care about his own daughter. He hates and distrusts everyone, why should he have so much trust in a slave such as Ithamore?

The scene of him, disguised as a fiddler, in front of Ithamore, Pilia-Borza, and the courtesan is amusing however. 

T. W. Craik says: 

“When Barabas decides to betray the Turks to the Governor—having just betrayed the Governor to the Turks—he is given a soliloquy which explains his reasons. Marlowe seems not to care that the explanation is utterly unconvincing (Will Barabas’s life be any less in danger if he trusts the Governor’s word? Would Barabas trust anybody’s word?): his concern is merely to provide sufficient explanation to usher in the climax of the play.” (Introduction)  

Apart from ushering in the climax of the play, I suppose Marlowe intends to make a point that the Governor’s words mean nothing. Everyone in the story is deceitful and dishonourable: the Jew, the Muslim (Ithamore), the Christians. The only good, sympathetic character in the entire play is Abigail.

However, because Barabas’s reasoning is so unconvincing, his destruction is to me not very satisfying. 

6/ The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice are very different plays. The plots don’t have much in common. Barabas and Shylock are different, as I’ve written, and it’s impossible not to notice an enormous gap between the two plays in terms of characterisation and psychology. 

One interesting thing I’d like to point out is that Barabas is the central character of The Jew of Malta and appears in almost all the scenes, whereas Shylock appears in only 5 out of 20 scenes but dominates the play with the sheer force of his personality, upsets the balance, and casts a long shadow long after he has left the play. 

Both are villains, but if Barabas is pure savagery and nothing more, Shakespeare gives Shylock pain, hate, love, and heartbreak—he gives him depth and humanity—he makes us see what it does to a man’s soul when he’s hated and abused for his ethnicity and religion for his entire life.  

Overall, The Jew of Malta was perhaps exciting at the time. Now it’s just crude, and often ridiculous.