Survey of Criticism
by Angela Santoriello
If
Christopher Marlowe could be part of a literary conversation between
legendary critics Tucker Brooke and T.S. Eliot, one wonders what his
thoughts would be on the evolved subject matter of both the character
Barabas and his authentic role in the play The Jew of Malta over the last four centuries. Would
Marlow admit to the theory initiated by Brooke “that the radical
transformation of Barabas after act two was the work of a redactor,
probably Thomas Heywood, and not Marlowe?” (Friedenreich 318). Or would he argue along with Eliot for rights of authorship by “suggesting instead that The Jew of Malta
was actually a farce, and that we had long misunderstood the humor
which accompanies Barabas’s metamorphosis” (Friedenreich 319).
Only Marlowe can answer this question, and because this is not a possibility, we must turn to Marlowe’s literary works instead. In
order to find the answer to the questions posed in the above imagined
conversation, the character of Barabas must first be studied. “The Jew as Renaissance Man,” written by Peter Berek, educates any critic on the figure of Jews in the sixteenth century. According
to Berek, “the legal bar to Jewish residence in England began to be
permeable, at least for Jews who were willing to make a ‘counterfeit
profession’ of Christianity (the phrase, of course, comes from The Jew of Malta)” (Berek 128).
The portrayal of a Jew in early modern England was sketched with mannerisms that revealed deep themes. Berek
emphasizes how “the theater of the 1590s was obsessed by the
possibilities that identity might be willed or chosen and social
position achieved by deeds, not birth” (Berek 130). Berek
continues this assertion by using Barabas as an excellent example,
“Barabas is not simply a villain by birth; he chooses the role and is
fully aware of what he does as he plays his part” (Berek 137). Marlowe’s Barabas becomes more complex with the following thought:
Through in The Jew of Malta
Barabas’s Jewishness is part of the essence of his villainy, the energy
underlying the play’s anti-Semitism arises less from belief about Jews
than from anxieties about self-fashioning. Jewishness becomes a trope for anxiety about social change. Moreover,
in the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare, the Jew becomes a figure who
enables them to express and at the same time condemn the impulse in
both culture and theater to treat selfhood and social roles as a matter
of choice. (Berek 138, 158)
Selfhood and social roles were a new concept for early English minds. The two concepts were never presented together with such importance until Marlowe introduced Barabas.
While the Jew functioned as reflections for the themes of self-will and anti-Semitism, he also functioned as a critic:
The Jew on the late sixteenth century stage becomes the center of a larger critique. He
becomes the criticizer of the stage of the city and the ruling classes
at large, and also the target of the audience’s both on stage and off –
judgment against him. Note that this critic
is not impartial, not in the least objective; simply, that
critic-figure must engage the audience, so that the audience
effectively ‘sees’ through her or her eyes. This figure acts as a kind of guide to lead the audience through the stage world. This is the role of Barabas. (Kermode 2)
As
a critic, Barabas reveals to the audience through his behavior that
self choice creates either a fortunate or destructive destiny. Through
Barabas, the audience is given one of their first chances in early
English theater to think outside of the play and into their own lives.
Marlowe created in Barabas a Jew that demanded movement in the traditional thoughts of the renaissance theater. With the creation of Barabas came the revelation of the Jew for early English theater. Before
the character of Barabas, the renaissance theater was never given the
eyes of a Jew to see through, particularly the eyes of a Jew that saw
right through the hypocrisy and greed of self-claiming Christians. Barabas’s behavior is a queer stereotype of Marlowe’s invention. Marlowe’s
construction of a Jewish man in spiritual, financial, and mental
upheaval transforms Barabas into a tangible character that the audience
can feel sentiment for.
The transfiguration of Barabas’s character after act two seriously questions both sentiment and sanity. The
change within Marlowe’s Jew is so severe that critics have speculated
over the last few centuries that Marlowe was not the sole author of the
play:
Criticism of The Jew of Malta
has persistently sought a satisfactory explanation for the apparent
change in Marlowe’s conception of his hero, Barabas, who seems cast in
the first two acts in the familiar mold of a Marlovian superman, but
who is somehow transformed in the last three acts into a comical
avenger. (Friedenreich 318)
More critics along with Friedenreich seek The Jew of Malta with questions, creating an even more enticing hypothetical conversation. Howard S. Babb’s critique in 1957 agrees with Freidenreich’s analysis written in 1977:
The difficulty arises from the tonal change that follows two acts of apparently conventional seriousness. What are we to think when the heroic Barabas is suddenly transformed into a plotter? What the crudities of Bellamira and Pilia-Borza? How should we react to the horrors of the Jew’s revenge, which seem absurd if only because they pile up so quickly? Most
commentators seek a way around such questions by ascribing the third,
fourth, and fifth act – through without agreeing precisely on the
limits of Marlowe’s authorship – to the hand of another, usually Thomas
Heywood, who was responsible for the play’s first printing in 1633. (Babb 85)
Nodding to Babb, Leo Kirschbaum interrupts with the idea that “some Scholars hold that the text of The Jew of Malta
which we have today is not the text which Marlowe composed, and that
the third and fourth acts have undergone drastic revision, perhaps even
augmentation” (53). Kirschbaum’s “Some Light on The Jew of Malta” printed in 1946 supports the theory of textual tampering over fifty years later. Critic Robert Funk writes in 1999 that “as almost all critics have commented, The Jew of Malta does seem to be a schizophrenic play” (2). In
this conversation, the hypothetical chatter amongst Freidenreich, Babb,
Kirschbaum, and Funk would firmly support the corrupt text theory. As a thorough critic, it is important to challenge the opinions of even the wisest of critics. To stir up some literary strife, the mention of Barabas’s textual notoriety must be injected into the conversation.
The notoriety of Barabas and Marlowe is obviously timeless. Whether
T.S. Eliot is challenging Tucker Brooke or H.S. Bennet, the
conversation of Marlowe’s play lends itself to serious consideration.
H.S.
Nemmett, the play’s next major editor after Tucker Brooke, deals with
Barabas’s transformation as a problem of textual corruption, although
he is unconvinced that a redactor’s hand can be positively identified. Bennett, however, cannot account for the apparent change in tone in The Jew of Malta
by considering the play a farce, rejecting Eliot’s view because it
bewstows ‘considerable powers of detachment from contemporary taste and
practice on the part of Marlowe.’” (Freidenreich 323)
After Bennett’s editing of The Jew of Malta, Barabas’s notoriety became more apparent in the play. With
reference to such notoriety, Marlowe might have been willing to agree
with Babb’s statement that “T.S. Eliot has made the most notorious
attempt to try the barrier, arguing that The Jew of Malta
‘becomes intelligible’ when viewed ‘not as tragedy’ but as farce, ‘the
farce of old English humour, the terribly serious, even savage comic
humour…which spent its last breath in the decadent genius of Dickens”
(Babb 85). Between the example of Dickens and Eliot’s opinion, Marlowe’s authorship is more clearly demonstrated.
Interjecting
into the conversation with Eliot, Brooke, and Bennett, renowned critic
M.M. Mahood calls the play “a tragic farce, which is unified by a theme
of avarice” (Freidenreich 325). Mahood’s
opinion supports fellow 1940s critic Paul H. Kocher by saying,
“Kocher’s most telling argument is a discussion of humor in the play
and its bearing on the issue of Barabas’s transformation. While
Kocher is certain that the play is a ‘commentary on Christianity,’ he
is less certain about its design, alleging that it is ultimately
‘shapeless in construction and confused in meaning’” (Freidenreich 324,
325). Kocher’s uncertainty about the design of the text could be flawed by his own personal judgments of Marlowe. His
questions of the humor of the playwright and the play seem to further
explain Kocher was more interested in Marlowe’s personal sense of humor
than the humor displayed in the play. Mahood
further explains that “Kocher is the first critic after Eliot to
suppose Marlowe possessed a sense of humor, regrettably, this critic is
more interested in trying to suit his own humor to an image of the
playwright than to his play (Freidenreich 324, 325).
During any good literary criticism conversation, imagined or otherwise, the The New York Times Theater Review must be considered. The 1965 production of The Jew of Malta at the Stratford Theater in New York provokes theatrical insight into the conversation. The
review explains, “The Stratford audience seemed to enjoy the fire,
brilliance and cynicism of Barabas more than the anguished writhing of
Shylock. One feels at the fiery end of The Jew of Malta that there has been no tragedy by a coruscating burlesque” (The New York Times). Theater critic Kate Kellaway would support the New York Times review agreeing that “it is not a tragedy nor yet a comedy. It exists cockily between the two. It plays for quick thrills and cheap laughs” (1).
If in such a conversation critics could not agree on Marlowe’s authorship of The Jew of Malta, they could at least agree that the corrupt text theory is the most critical controversy involving the play. Readers
and critics alike will never know what Marlowe had in mind when he
manifested the voice of Machiavelli and the character of Barabas in The Jew of Malta. The
only way to find any kind of answers is to further study Marlowe’s text
and then to jump into the conversation with the critics themselves.
Works Cited
Babb, Howard S. “Policy in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.” ELH 24.2 (1957):
85-94.
Berek, Peter. “The Jew as Renaissance Man.” Renaissance Quarterly 51.1
(1998): 128-162.
Friedenreich, Kenneth. “The Jew of Malta and the Critics: A Paradigm of
Marlowe Studies.” Papers on Language and Literature. 13.3 (1977):
318-335.
Funk, Robert N. ‘To Stir Strife: The Use of Seneca in The Jew of Malta’s
Prologue.” English Language Notes 36.3 (1999): 1-4.
Kellaway, Kate. “Atrocity Exhibition.” New Statesman 128.4458 (10/18/99):
48-49.
Kirschbaum, Leo. “Some Light on The Jew of Malta.” Modern Language
Quarterly 7.1 (1946): 53-56.
Kermode, Lloyd Edward. “Marlowe’s Second City: The Jew as Critic at the
Rose in 1592.” Studies in English Literature (Rice) 35.2 (1995): 1-10.
The New York Times Theatre Review 1920-1970: Volume 8 - 1967-1970.
New York: The New York Times & Arno P, 1971.
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ACT I:
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