Online Library of Liberty: The Works of Christopher Marlowe vol. 1 Portable Library of Liberty

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himself, when questioned about Dr. faustus,” burst out with an exclamation of praise :
How greatly was it all planned! He had thought of translating it.”
We have no evidence to enable us to fix precisely the date of the Jew of Malta. The
reference in the prologue to the death of the Duke of Guise shows that it was
composed not earlier than December 1588. Hens-lowe's Diary contains numerous
entries concerning the play, ranging from 26th February 1591-2 to 2ist June 1596; and
there is a notice in the Diary of its revival on 17th. On ay 1594 it was entered in the
Stationers' Books, but it was not published until 633, when it was edited by Thomas
Heywood after its revival at Court and at the Cockpit. In 1608, as Herr Meissner has
shown, it was one of the plays performed at Graetz during the Carnival; in the
previous year it had been performed at Passau.
The Jew of Malta is a very unequal work. Hallam, the most cautious of critics, gives it
as his opinion that the first two acts “are more vigorously conceived, both as to
character and to circumstance, than any other Elizabethan play, except those of
Shakespeare.” This judgment, bold as it appears at first sight, probably represents the
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truth. The masterful grasp that marks the opening scene was a new thing in English
tragedy. Language so strong, so terse, so dramatic, had never been heard before on the
English stage. In the two first acts there is not a trace of juvenility; all is conceived
largely and worked out in firm, bold strokes. Hardly Shakespeare's touch is more
absolutely true and unfaltering; nor is it too much to say that, had the character been
developed throughout on the same scale as in the first two acts, Barabas would have
been worthy to stand alongside of Shylock. But in the last three acts vigorous drawing
is exchanged for caricature; for a sinister life-like figure we have a grotesque stage-
villain, another Aaron. How this extraordinary transformation was effected, why the
poet, who started with such clear-eyed vision and stern resolution, swerved so blindly
and helplessly from the path, is a question that may well perplex critics. Was the
artist's hand paralysed by the consciousness of an inability to work out in detail the
great conception? I think not. It is more reasonable to assume that the play was
required by the actors at a very short notice, and that Marlowe merely sketched
roughly the last three acts, leaving it to another hand to fill in the details; or it may be
that he put the play aside, under stress of more pressing work, with the intention of
resuming the half-told story at a later date, an intention which was frustrated by his
sudden death. In any case it is a sheer impossibility to believe that the play in its
present form represents the poet's finished work. Marlowe is not less guiltless of the
extravagance and buffoonery in the last three acts of the Jew of Malta than of the
grotesque and farcical additions made to Dr. Faustus. Yet it was doubtless to this very
extravagance that the play owed much of its popularity.
1
It has not yet been discovered where Marlowe procured the materials for his play.
Probably he used some forgotten novel; nor is it unlikely that he had been afforded
opportunities of personally studying Jewish character. The old notion that there were
no Jews in England during the Elizabethan time has been shown by modern research
to be wholly untenable.
2
Barabas' devoted lore for his daughter is so fully emphasized
in the first two acts that we cannot but suppose Marlowe to have been acquainted with
at least one leading trait in Jewish character, the intense family-affection which has
distinguished the Jews of all ages. Round the person of Barabas, in the two first acts,
is thrown such a halo of poetry as circles Shylock from first to last His figure seems to
assume gigantic proportions; his lust of gold is conceived on so grand a scale that the
grovelling passion is transmuted, by the alchemy of the poet's imagination, into a
magnificent ambition. Our senses are dazzled, sober reason is staggered by the
vastness of Barabas' greed:—
“Give me the merchants of the Indian mines,
That trade in metal of the purest mould;
The wealthy Moor that in the Eastern rocks
Without control can pick his riches up,
And in his house heap pearl like pebble-stones,
Receive them free and sell them by the weight;
Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts,
Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds,
And seld-seen costly stones of so gieat price,
As one of them, indifferently rated,
And of a carat of this quantity,
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May serve, in peril of calamity,
To ransom great kings from captivity.”
Very impressive is the scene where Barabas is shown pacing beneath the casement,
“in the shadow of the silent night,” like an unquiet spirit round a spot where treasure
has been buried. And what a burst of lyric ecstacy when he clasps once more his
money-bags!—
“Now, Phœbus, ope the eye-lids
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of the day,
And, for the raven, wake the morning lark,
That I may hover with her in the air,
Singing o'er these, as she does o'er her young.”
Again and again must we regret that the last three acts were not composed on the
same scale as the earlier part of the play.