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| Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 35, 1995 "Marlowe's
second city": the Jew as critic
at the Rose in 1592. by Lloyd Edward Kermode
When the London theatergoers of the 1590s made the short river trip to the South Bank, they left behind them a place which displayed certain fixed features (infrastructure, Protestant Christian ideology), and a place where the lives of the lawmakers and law-followers were affected by the political machinations of international relations and historical placement (tension between London and Spain, proximity to the economically and ideologically important Netherlands). Where they went, to the Rose or the Globe, were places with fixed features (the walls, the stage, the galleries, Protestant Christian ideology) and where the lives of those who performed, those who were portrayed, and those who watched were affected by the political and religious machinations in England and abroad (the sensitivity of the Master of the Revels, dramatic fashion). They left the city of London and reconvened in a "second city," the theater. In this paper I shall show how one of the satirical political dramatist's most cunning weapons was put to work in this "second city," and how the location of the amphitheaters - geographical, social, and ideological - paradoxically both intensified the potentiality of the damage this weapon could inflict, yet also cushioned the city of London from the influential power of the drama. This weapon was simply one of the dramatist's characters: the figure of the male Jew - an outsider, a stranger, an objective commentator and subversive critic, willing to fight against the sociopolitical system represented on the stage. Robert Wilson, Shakespeare, Chapman, William Haughton, and Marston all wrote plays in which a Jewish or Jew-like character played a leading role; and in all these cases, the Jew carries out the function of social critic, sometimes passive and meek, often angry and loud. My familiar example will be the Jew of Malta, Barabas, and his slave, Ithamore.(1) As an outsider, in terms of religion, nationality, and (often enforced) professional occupation, the Jew on the late-sixteenth-century stage becomes the center of a larger critique. He becomes the criticizer of the state of the city and of the ruling classes at large, and also the target of the audience's - both on stage and off - judgment against him. I will go on to investigate how such an alien figure can resemble a "hero," and in order to justify the suggestions of analogy and transference from stage representation to the "real world" that I will make, we should consider a little further the theater/audience/city relationship at the Rose in 1592. That the amphitheaters were divided from the city, at a distance outside the walls, meant that the theatergoers could physically exit the contained city ideologies of London. Steven Mullaney blurs something of this simple yet important concept when he terms the suburbs "Liberties" as well as the real Liberties of the city.(2) What happened during the migration of persons between the two cities, London and amphitheater, is this: knowing themselves to be the very definition of the city (cities are described by population figures), and the subjects and therefore very perpetuators of ideology, the playgoers deconstruct the city of London without destroying it. The city of London as an ideological concept in the minds of the theatergoers is kept in limbo. Once in the South Bank theater these subjects, pieces of the city structure, possess a vital distance from the city, and the subsequent reconstruction of their community is an affirmation of this group's own identity as different from the city, but inextricably of the city; they are able to leave London, reconvene, and avoid the city authorities, but their points of reference in play-making, their judgmental forces, will continually refer back to their conditioning as Londoners. I The very idea of the Jew on the late-sixteenth-century stage makes the use of this figure as an associate of the Christian audience alarming, cunning, and subversive. What is set up in The Jew of Malta is something that will be far less certain in The Merchant of Venice when it appears several years later. Barabas is a villain precisely because he is a Jew, and therefore the term "Jew" will suffice to presuppose all other villainous attributes.(3) Something of the status of the appellation might be gleaned from the episode in which Pilia-Borza and Bellamira arrange with Ithamore to get money from Barabas. Ithamore begins the demand letter "Master/Barabas -" (IV.ii.75-6).(4) Pilia-Borza tells him "Write not so submissively, but threatening him" and so Ithamore restarts, "Sirrah Barabas" (IV.ii.77-8). When Pilia-Borza returns with the news that Barabas has supposedly only given him ten crowns instead of the demanded three hundred, Ithamore thinks of the most contemptuous way to demand more money. His letter begins "Sirrah Jew" (IV.ii.124).(5) Shylock, on the other hand, has reason for what he does. Whether it is good reason or not, it is certainly logical, and the Christians find themselves in need of a good (non-Venetian) mouthpiece to argue for their side. This mouthpiece, Portia, is another example of a figure from without who critiques the State she or he enters into, a State that to a greater or lesser extent marginalizes that character. 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 his eyes. This figure acts as a kind of guide to lead the audience through the stage world. This is the role played by Barabas. But Marlowe's weapon is so much more powerful, the relativity of the grievances so much more intriguing because, unlike Portia, Barabas is a hateful character, a Jew; yet he wins an audience's empathy. Marlowe gives nothing away at the beginning. We surely cannot guess that soon we will consider seriously the appropriateness of the Jew's subversive message and methods. The introduction of Barabas is a blatant taunting device - "in his counting-house, with heaps of gold before him" (I.i.s.d., p. 67). Barabas laments "what a trouble 'tis to count this trash!" (I.i.7). He may signal to the audience in the yard as he says "The needy groom that never fingered groat / Would make a miracle of thus much coin," and goes on to lament the money-counting chore a second time (I.i.12-3). In his little counting-house, rich and bitter, wealthy and boasting, perhaps wearing "the artificial Jewe of Maltae's nose" and traditional red wig denoting a traitor against Jesus, he is the archetypal villain.(6) If the audience knows only that he is a Jew at this point, they know by line 49 that he is not just any Jew, but Barabas, aurally the same as the robber and murderer who was freed in Christ's place. That the audience is aware of this name's relevance is confirmed by Barabas's instruction and ironic question to the merchant in the opening scene, "Go tell 'em the Jew of Malta sent thee, man; / Tush, who amongst 'em knows not Barabas?" (I.i.66-7, my emphasis). We should make a distinction here between the use of the Jew as a representative of Barabas, and the use of the Jew as a representative of Judas. Although standing for the anti-Christian race, this Jew of Malta does not stand for the specific betrayer, the damned Antichrist. A similar effect upon the audience of anti-Christianism, but not "Antichrist-ism," may occur when Shylock says of his daughter "Would any of the stock of Barabbas / Had been her husband rather than a Christian! - " (IV.i.293-4).(7) Barabas names himself here, then, but that naming paradoxically takes away from specific identity, rather than adding to it. It only places him in a category. Stephen Greenblatt has spotted a conflict of identity in Barabas, a tug-of-war between hidden psychology and what is openly declared. While plying an individuality through his self-alienating, and his exemplary "self-fashioning" behavior, Barabas is also falling into the trap of becoming a personification of a concept, not of a human being. "Most dramatic characters - Shylock would be an appropriate example - accumulate identity in the course of their play; Barabas desperately tries to dispossess himself of such identity. But this steady erosion of himself is precisely what he has pledged himself to resist; his career, then, is in its very essence suicidal."(8) The erosion of identity of the antagonists is an ancient requirement for tragedy. Rene Girard seems absolutely correct when he writes that "violence invariably effaces the differences between antagonists."(9) Barabas erodes his own identity through paradoxical self-nomenclature, disguises (apparel, drugs), and association (Ithamore, the Turks, the Maltese), and through violence he and his enemies are made all but indistinguishable. The audience will be left in a quandary: whether to support the admirable efforts of the disgusting Jew or the saving grace of the popish Catholics. How the identity of Barabas is seemingly "fattened out," made particular, is by teaming him up with a partner in crime, who will shadow Barabas and imitate his evil. Ithamore is from "Thrace; brought up in Arabia" (II.iii.131). Barabas puts aside the slave he specifically terms "Moor" to choose one who will be credited with the traditional viciousness of a Turk, but with a punning name that reminds the audience of his region of upbringing, neighbor land to the Moorish North Africa; he is a double villain. And Ithamore, like Barabas, is a critical outsider and a stranger in so far as he was not brought up where he was born and is now taken to a foreign land against his will. The Turk and the Jew are on England's stage, under the censuring eyes of the re-created "second city" spectators. Ithamore possesses no loyalties in the conflicts that will occur, but is a pawn, a death-messenger. We could say that we are, ultimately, left with an infidel threat from a rich stranger and his servant, to a Christian strategic stronghold, the city of Malta. This viewpoint estranges the Jew, makes foreign the compact Barabas-Ithamore army, and instructs the audience to take the evil natures of the Jew and the Turk for granted. In doing so the fact of their strangeness becomes at least as important as their specific nationality or religion; or rather their equal status as infidels puts to one side the apparently foregrounded scorn for "the Jew," per se.(10) Marlowe gives the audience a fascinating choice over how to view the relationships here: either critical outsiders versus followers of anti-Christ or evil infidels versus Christians. It is difficult to guess just how much the general theatergoing public knew or cared about the history of Malta and the legacy of the Knights of St. John. If reports of the situation in Malta were reaching England in the 1580s, as Godfrey Wettinger claims,(11) the concern of the English that the strategically located island be sufficiently protected from the Turk must have been mixed. Malta had not seen significant military action since the Turkish attack of 1565, the great Turkish invasions of Byzantium, Serbia, Morea, and elsewhere occurring in the fifteenth century.(12) But the association of the Jew and the Turk was still a frightening anti-Christian force and the existence of a rich Jew in Malta was a horrendous thought, if we assume that to be rich is to be powerful.(13) Of course, it is also ideologically incorrect to cheer for the Spaniards represented on stage in 1592, and it is in the final act of The Jew of Malta that the audience's sympathies are tried. We may not expect an Elizabethan audience to be converted to the cause of Barabas; and neither should our modern sensitivities mislead us on the question of whether we expect them to object to the ferocity of Barabas's punishment when his entire estate was taken from him, for Barabas responds with disgusting verve. To be sure, his murder of a friar and poisoning of a whole convent involve the comedy of the assassin set upon popish victims, and play with the tradition of the corrupt or suspect figure of the friar, but this part of the drama remains within the secure realm of the "play world." Where the audience's "real world" understanding of the figure will come from is the fact that the audience possesses a specific, analogical situation. It is located historically in 1592 and spatially outside the city walls. Steven Mullaney notes the parallel of the theatrical fictional and physical situation: Barabas outside Malta's walls, and the theater outside London's walls.(14) As I engage now with the analysis of a particular dramatic moment to put these proposals of place, relationship, and effect into practice, I should call a character witness to support my isolation of a scene for use as illustrative material. Yurim Lotman has said that "the analogy between painting and theatre was manifested above all in the organization of the spectacle through conspicuously pictorial means of artistic modelling, in that the stage text tended to unfold not as a continuous flux (non 'discrete') imitating the passage of time in the extra-artistic world, but as a whole clearly broken up into single 'stills' organized synchronically, each of which is set within the decor like a picture in a frame."(15) The time-abstracted picture on which Mullaney, and now I, dwell is presented to the audience in the theater's frame, and shows Barabas thrown "o'er the walls" (V.i.58). He wakes from the drugs he has taken to feign death and stands alone, the single unheard middle-ranking professional. He is at this moment both physically and socially (as a Jew and a foreigner) an outsider. As such he is free to begin to decide on a way to reenter the city on his own terms, using the double level of identity that each audience member possesses - that of individual subject to the city, and ideological reinventor when outside the city boundary. He must use his knowledge of the city (his "inextricable link") and also his distance (outside of the walls) to create the critical act - the player attempting a "re-semblance" of the personal character that exists without the structure and stricture of the city law. This display of potentially subversive originality can be seen by an ideology locked within a city only as acting an unnatural part. In the South Bank theater the concept of the suburbs and of the danger of individual mental and physical liberty at this point becomes most highly charged. The whole purpose of creating a text of laws and proclamations within a jurisdiction is to ensure conformity and equal behavioral acts from its subjects. If the subject leaves that jurisdiction, she or he is free to reassess laws. Exiting an ideology (or even more simply exiting a safe, if oppressive community) to create such an original, de-legalized character produces a being who must in the end, like Barabas, be "all alone" (V.i.61); alone but with a charismatic power that dissatisfied Londoners might yearn for in this dark economic period. This character's deconstruction of the city body (by the removal of himself) is a way to reanalysis and affirmation of his serf as potential whole thinker and act-er; it is an analogue of the audience's deconstruction of the city structure and reestablishment in the theater. Multiple or en masse recognition of the place of the oppressed individual subject, possible only in the theater, is the beginning of the route to a common effective reaction against the city from without. It is the first step on a subversive path that leads right to the lawmakers and monarchs of the city or realm being critiqued. II It appears at first, then, that individuality is encouraged through the subjects' exiting from London, that we are seeing individuals in the audience being excited by the strongly individual character of Barabas. But in fact the theater creates a world in which the playgoers are homogenous analogues to the Jew. They may have a personal reaction to Barabas's display, but this reaction is a product of communal fashioning - it is the theater audience's reaction as a whole. This is not an encouraging concept for the human narcissistic and independence-loving psyche, but it would be, for many critics, the quintessential metamorphosis of the audience, allowing a common reception to dramatic stimuli, and so creating a serious anti-authoritarian, united force. Paul Yachnin, in his useful essay, "The Powerless Theater," denies this possibility: In the theater of the period, political meaning was depoliticized, either by being contained within the aesthetic form as merely the indeterminate subject of imaginative representation or by being made the product of the audience's reception of the text rather than the product of the text itself. The stage's representation of the operations of power was normally not allowed to coalesce in the kind of univocal and authorized meaning which might be seen as an attempt to intervene in the real world.(16) Like Barabas's naming of himself at the beginning of the play, the playgoers' renaming of themselves as a theater crowd does not create specific identity; it only shifts their membership affiliation between two related categories, London city and theater city. It is this two-fold, interdependent audience identity, I would argue, and not the weakness of drama and theater itself, which lessens dramatic political power. For in 1592 the stage was still potentially dangerous. In the theater of Marlowe, the aesthetic form of political action is not embellished or softened into an "indeterminate object of imaginative representation," but is cold, rapid display - the siege of the town cannot even be shown on the stage, it is so factual and real; the scaffold of Barabas's death is built and mastered as a new stage of death - simple, clean, quick, deadly, subversive, political. We must reconsider the widespread concern among critics to try to prove power inherent within the theater and dramatic performance, to find a "univocal and authorized meaning which might be seen as an attempt to intervene in the real world." The play is all power game, all control mechanism, manipulating the audience; the play world is already in the real world, and should affect it. Where the problem lies, why the should is not a will, is in the fact that the audience in London city and the audience in theater city cannot entirely dislocate themselves, and a univocal meaning (or even an over-simplified authorization: to fight, to overturn, to die) falls however potently onto the ears of an audience fashioned too much by just that real world and ultimately unable to go out of the theater and act against it. It is not "the audience's reception" that we should be concerned with, but audience retention, necessary for audience action.(17) Thomas Cartelli's proposal that "in The Jew of Malta Marlowe provokes only minimal resistance to the enjoyment his version of burlesque affords" does not matter. It is not enough for the play to be "a collective fantasy getting out of hand."(18) The play can assume all the powerful roles in the world. But for the playgoers to accept Barabas as their permanent hero, their subversive role model, they must reject London's ideology wholesale - not only its suppression of domestic protest, but also the long-assumed hatred for the "infidel." It is with such an ideologically cleared mind that the theatergoers subsequently would have to return to London, if they were to effect change in their personal situations as a result of the play. But such a reaction against what have largely become accepted, even if questioned, ideological norms is a lot to ask. We must investigate further how Marlowe wheedles his critical Jew into the favor of the audience, and moreover how this can only remain a local effect, one that disintegrates with the breaking-up of the audience at the end of the play. Calymath enters to the wakened and vengeful Barabas, who proclaims "My name is Barabas; I am a Jew" (v.i.72). The dramatic irony of the line is hilarious, for the audience can see that he is a Jew; even in the fictional image Calymath should be able to see that he is a Jew. Barabas even reveals his name before the obvious statement. And finally, as if teasing, as if he knew all along, Calymath recognizes Barabas's fame: "Art thou that Jew whose goods we heard were sold / For tribute-money?" "The very same, my lord," Barabas replies (V.i.73-4). Barabas, now outside the walls, now alone in a personal quest for revenge against the city, appears through this irony to be rebuilding the identity that he falsely set up at the beginning, a shield of nomenclature from behind which to fight. This self-reintroduction by Barabas so late in the play, rapidly followed by his plan for taking the city, should be the ultimate piece of effective "self-fashioning." But as Stephen Greenblatt reminds us, "Naming oneself is not enough; one must also name and pursue a goal. [Marlowe's] heroes do so with a splendid energy that distinguishes their words as well as their actions from the surrounding society. The Turks, friars, and Christian knights may all be driven by 'The wind that bloweth all the world besides, / Desire of gold' (III. 1422-3), but only Barabas can speak of 'infinite riches in a little roome' (I.72)."(19) But even this is not good enough. Barabas is talking in riddles. His "infinite riches" are, of course, unattainable, and this will be proven at the end of the play - at the end of all life. As Cartelli insists, this scene certainly "provokes" the audience. The niggling fact that the Maltese city that wronged Barabas is one governed by Spanish-ruled Catholics makes its undermining - in the fiction of this play - a not unattractive proposal for the London audience. And undermining is literally what the Turks and Barabas do. They reenter the city via its sewers;(20) they take revenge on the city emblematically in that they return through the channels that should only allow effluent to leave the jurisdiction - they are therefore dangerous excess to the city's safety, the city's political filth infecting the city structure. Back inside the Maltese city, Barabas and the Turks avenge as iconoclasts, usurping the figures of supposed justice, rising up "dirtily" from physically - and by metaphor socially - "below" the city. The actor on stage is setting an example for the audience, but the message is not stable. As Michael Goldman has said, "We are made sharply aware of the actor both activating an icon and altering it"; manipulation is the name of the game.(21) III Scene ii of the final act opens with the assault having succeeded. Magically, off-stage, in the "theatrical space without," the city of the Spanish crusaders is violated. Hanna Scolnicov writes: The founding of Rome [in Ovid's Fasti] is described as a cutting-off and consecrating of a particular space. According to Eliade, city walls were originally erected not for military protection but as a magical defence, for they marked out from the midst of a "chaotic" space, peopled with demons and phantoms, an enclosure, a place that was organised . . . provided with a "centre." The sacred circle, cut off and delimited, consecrated and imbued with strength and significance, is highly suggestive in relation to the theatrical space.(22) If the theater is its own "organised" space, it is truly a "second city": a walled, organized location of life-stories, parts of which others experience, relate, or miss completely. There is more. The idea of magical defense reflects the reliance of the theater on illusion - the illusion of protection (that the Essex conspirators trusted to), of autonomy, and of power within the theatrical (architectural) space. The theater is an alternative not only to the geographical city space but also to the city ideology. It is a "sacred" alternative to the religious requirement of the official ideological apparatus; the trend to contrast the theater with a church or with schools, theaters being places of ungodly learning, was perhaps a more profound observation than many contemporary writers realized. We are shown that Barabas's method of entry has left the city walls physically intact. His self-enclosure in the city is his suicidal version of "the constant attempt by characters within the plays to control, imprison, and wall up one another, while maintaining to themselves the fiction of breaking boundaries down."(23) Intention-success (performance of the intended action) is possible, but purpose-success (achievement of the desired end) is ultimately not.(24) The overthrow of the oppressor does not result in finality; revolution is not a stable condition. So, ultimately, despite all the promise, the theatergoers are not given a way to hold the city from within. The Machiavellian element may be involved in the successful siege, but is really confirmed with typical Marlovian sleight-of-hand in the successful princehood and protection of the fortress by Ferneze. The power of drama gulls the audience. Barabas's victory is temporary, even illusory. His greed will cause a final self-destructive attempt at gain and glory and the Catholic Christians will regain the city; their sacred wall - the Religious State Apparatus - remains intact too. The two enclosures, city and theater, remain discrete and undamaged. Rebecca W. Bushnell is near to the mark with her summary of Tamburlaine I and II and The Jew of Malta as "plays that explore the craving for power and the strategies of usurpation. None of these plays concerns the exercise of power as tyranny; instead, each play displays the spectacle of ambition." She continues: In The Jew of Malta, when Barabas is installed as governor, he seems momentarily confused; like Tamburlaine, he understands only need and not its fulfillment, so when he seeks "for much, but [can] not compass it," it is because he cannot bear to be "compassed" (5.2.46). Having achieved authority, Barabas almost immediately collapses, and one of his own "engines" backfires on him. In the logic of representing ambition in these plays, the conclusion is not morally motivated; the action just grinds to a halt when desire is exhausted.(25) Stephen Greenblatt has blamed Barabas's failure on "his desire to avoid the actual possession of power."(26) Indeed, by keeping the horizon of his power struggle exactly that - an ever-escaping sight ("infinite riches") - Barabas avoids having to hold on to the reality of power, avoids the inevitability of having to impose limits on his power (hence the dreadful mistake inherent in walling himself in the city). Tamburlaine similarly sees infinite space left to conquer as he peruses a map in his final hours of life. Peter S. Donaldson says of Tamburlaine's reception of the tactile crown: The crown is necessary here not because Tamburlaine has any real sense of the earthly fruition he claims it represents, but because one must turn to something from the chaotic reflection of man's essence in nature, from warring elements, wandering planets, reflecting inner weariness and aimless oscillation. Marlowe mentions the "wondrous architecture" of the world, but what he presents is not an ordered universe, but rather one that mirrors the disorder of a fragmented self. To aim at the crown is really to turn away from the chaos of nature to a realm of willed coherence. The speech passes from images of fragmenting "natural" energies to the stable but ironic self-icon of the crown.(27) Barabas is the alternative power seeker. His "willed coherence" is strong, but his "aimless oscillation" is revealed in his final fall into the cauldron. Barabas does have a real sense of the earthly fruition that he claims his power signifier - money - represents, but he cannot grasp the reality of power itself. The chase is more thrilling - and less tiresome - than holding on to the struggling catch called the power of rule. His ordered intention is reflected in his carefully constructed execution scaffold upon the stage; but his desire for avoidance of final power - the purpose-success - makes this scaffold another "self-icon," the rebuilt ("revolutionary," reinstating, return to the original) power structure. What is provided for the audience is only the suggestion that from without the city can be challenged. There is no dramatic force that can scale the walls and overturn this "real world." In the end political subversion is within the power of the theater, but it cannot be converted to revolution inside the city by the audience, who must be the agents of any such process. But we may not like this ending. It is depressing. So we come back at it with dramatic subversion like the Isle of Dogs affair, or the incidents surrounding The Play of Sir Thomas More. Or we cite the Dutch Church libel, with its "Machiavellian Marchant," its "Paris massacre" and its marginal "Tamburlaine," a prime example of a political text born of social and political dissatisfaction, of the force of knowledge of foreign affairs, and of the power of Marlowe's particular seminar in subversion at the "schoole of abuse" called the Rose. But the Dutch Church Libel was a sheet pinned up in the primary city (London), that having stated its dramatic influences from the second city of performance (the Rose), remains a text that hints at revolutionary, subversive, individualistic possibility, yet in reality confirms only nationalistic and xenophobic homogeneity. Full of plans and threats - like Barabas - the text has lost its ability to turn into action somewhere in the "passage" (V.i.88) between the theater and the streets of London.(28) NOTES 1 The significant critic-Jews (or Jew-like figures) in the drama of the 1590s include Gerontus in Robert Wilson, The Three Ladies of London (1581); Shylock; Pisaro in William Haughton, Englishmen for my Money (1598); and the English Mamon in Marston, Jack Drum's Entertainment (1600/1). 2 This is brought about in part by Steven Mullaney's attempts to align the "liminal," or marginalized, theater with the literally marginal areas of the city (i.e., the suburbs), which are not in themselves Liberties. See in particular The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 21-2. Mullaney writes, "Liberties existed within the city walls as well, but they too stood outside of London's effective domain; like the Liberties outside the walls, they were a part of the city yet juridically set apart from it" (p. 21). 3 For further discussion of the scornful burrs that stick to Jews in drama, see Earl Dachslager, "'The Stock of Barabas': Shakespeare's Unfaithful Villains," The Upstart Crow 6 (1986): 8-21, 12; and Bernard Spivack, Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil: The History of a Metaphor in Relation to His Major Villains (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958), pp. 347-8. 4 Line references are to the Revels Plays edition of The Jew of Malta, ed. N. W. Bawcutt (Manchester and New York: Manchester Univ. Press, 1978). 5 Thomas North writes, in his translation of Don Anthony of Guevara's The Diall of princes (1557), "Let him take heed also that he do not call his servants drunkards, thieves, villains, Jews nor other such like names of reproach" (ed. K. N. Colvile [London: Philip Allan, 1919], pp. 252-3). Leslie Fiedler summarizes the Jew's state: "usuriousness, avarice, lust for vengeance, and hostility to music, masquing, and young love. For all of this, in Shakespeare's day, the unmodified generic epithet 'Jew' would serve." Of Portia's treatment of Shylock, Fiedler continues, she "turn[s] her back on him to discuss him with her fellow Christians as though he were a creature in another realm of being" (The Stranger in Shakespeare [London: Croom Helm, 1973], p. 106). The turning of the back is, of course, something Fiedler has insinuated into the text himself, but the impression the words make and their "directive" ability is profound. 6 William Rowley refers to the stage property in A Search for Money (1609; rprt. London: Percy Society Publications, 1840), p. 19. 7 This is an important and largely neglected distinction. Since Barabas is fighting the representatives of the Papacy ("anti-Christ"), his anti-Christianism is somewhat mitigated. Furthermore, my own view is that the 1594 revival of The Jew of Malta shows - due to historical and political factors (methods of execution, the Lopez affair) - a new Jew, this time indeed the anti-Christ, and one who is punished appropriately for taking just that stance. 8 Stephen J. Greenblatt, "Marlowe and Renaissance Self-Fashioning," in Two Renaissance Mythmakers: Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1975-6 n.s I, ed. Alvin Kernan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1977): 41-69, 54. 9 Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Paris, 1972), trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979), p. 47. 10 In "The Stock of Barabas," Earl Dachslager notes that "For all practical purposes, as well as dramatic, the three were one: Jew, pagan, Turk (or Arab) would have been defined as the infidel" (p. 8). In his lamentable travelogue of 1595, Richard Hasleton does not seem to differentiate between Turks and Moors. He changes the familiar saying of "to turn Turk" to "turning Moore" (Strange and Wonderfull Things Happened to Richard Hasleton [London, 1595], sig. B4, Ev). Cesare Federici also writes, "alwayes whereas I have spoken of Gentiles, is to be understood Idolaters, and whereas I speak of Moores I meane Mahomets sect" (The Voyage and Travaile of M. Caesar Frederick, Merchant of Venice [London, 1588], sig. G2). Richard Hasleton's tale of escape from the clutches of Mahometans by dressing up as a Moor again questions the use of the term for anything but religious reference. 11 For a note on English visitors to Malta see Godfrey Wettinger, The Jews of Malta in the Late Middle Ages (Malta: Midsea Books, 1985), p. 147. 12 See Alison Hoppen, The Fortification of Malta by the Order of St. John, 1530-1798 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979), p. 4. 13 Observations by travelers, however, suggest that to be a rich and powerful Jew in Malta was an impossibility. Godfrey Wettinger writes that the Jews of Malta in the sixteenth century "were mere captives for the most part . . . who were certainly allowed occasionally to trade but never to the point of acquiring a vast private fortune" ("The Jews of Malta in the Late Middle Ages," Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 12 [1928-31]: 187-251, 147). Barabas should not be in a position to buy a slave in the Knights' stronghold. Just as Barabas is easily stripped of his wealth, Philip Skippon, a later English traveler in Malta, writes in 1663 that Jews, Moors, and Turks [sic] are made slaves here, and are publickly sold in the market. A stout fellow may be bought (if he be an inferior person) for 120 or 160 scudi of Malta. The Jews are distinguish'd from the rest by a little piece of yellow cloth on their hats or caps, &c. We saw a rich Jew who was taken about a year before, who was sold in the market that morning we visited the prison for 400 scudi; and supposing himself free, by reason of a passport he had from Venice, he struck the merchant that bought him; whereupon he was presently sent hither, his beard and hair shaven off, a great chain clapp'd on his legs, and bastinado'd with 50 blows. (From An Account of a Journey Made Through Part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France, quoted in Cecil Roth, "The Jews of Malta in the Late Middle Ages," p. 214.) 14 See Steven Mullaney, The Place of the Stage, p. 58, for an extended consideration of the "play world" and "real world" parallels evoked by this scene. 15 Yurim Lotman, "La scena e la pittura come dispositivi codificatori . . .," in Tipologia della Cultura, ed. Yurim Lotman and Borisa Uspensky (Milan: Bompiani, 1973): 277-91, 278. Quoted in Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (1980; rprt. London and New York: Methuen, 1988), p. 68. 16 Paul Yachnin, "The Powerless Theater," ELR 21, 1 (Winter 1991): 49-74, 72. Yachnin suggests earlier in his essay that City letters grew more moderate after 1595 (p. 71), and it seems clear from my own studies of the sequence of plays from 1588 to 1601 with major Jewish figures that the political tone shifts from straightforward complaint and violence to comic reviews and social niggling, albeit with very dark undertones. 17 An illustration from the drama of the contemporary fear that performance somehow gives a text longevity can be seen in Robert Wilson, The Three Ladies of London, where Simplicity warns that the audience is "eating up" (Diiiv) the play, suggesting the performed text's ability to lie within the critical digestive systems of the playgoers, and in these times of frustration, the potential to out suddenly. 18 Thomas Cartelli, "Endless Play: the False Starts of Marlowe's Jew of Malta," in A Poet and a Filthy Play-maker, ed. Kenneth Friedenreich, Roma Gill, and Constance B. Kuriyama (NewYork: AMS Press, 1988), pp. 117-28, 117-8. He quotes from Sigmund Freud, "Psychopathic Characters on the Stage," in vol. 7 of the Standard Edition of Freud's works (London: Hogarth Press, 1956), pp. 305-10, 309. 19 Greenblatt, p. 54. 20 Barabas's proposal to Calymath reads: Fear not, my lord; for here, against the sluice, The rock is hollow, and of purpose digged To make a passage for the running streams And common channels of the city. Now whilst you give assault unto the walls, I'll lead five hundred soldiers through the vault, And rise with them i' the middle of the town, Open the gates for you to enter in, And by this means the city is your own. (V.i.86-94) N. W. Bawcutt's note to "sluice" is, "Van Fossen retains Q's 'truce' and glosses 'against the truce' as 'either (1) contrary to the treaty or (2) in anticipation of the cessation of hostilities.' But both these senses are rather forced; ll. 86-89 clearly refer to a sewer or drainage channel, and 'sluice' (valve or barrier for controlling the flow of water) fits the context much better"; Bawcutt glosses "channels" as "gutters, sewers," p. 176. See R. W. Van Fossen's edition of the play (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1964). 21 Michael Goldman, "Performer and Role in Marlowe and Shakespeare," in Shakespeare and the Sense of Performance: Essays in the Tradition of Performance Criticism in Honor of Bernard Beckerman, ed. Marvin Thompson and Ruth Thompson (Newark and London: Univ. of Delaware Press and Associated Univ. Presses, 1989), pp. 91-102, 93. 22 See Hanna Scolnicov, "Theatre Space, Theatrical Space, and the Theatrical Space Without," in The Theatrical Space: Themes in Drama 9, ed. James Redmond (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), pp. 11-26, 13. 23 Marjorie Garber, "'Infinite Riches in a Little Room': Closure and Enclosure in Marlowe," in Two Renaissance Mythmakers, p. 7. 24 See Elam, pp. 122-3; concept originally by Teun A. Van Dijk, Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse (London: Longmans, 1977), pp. 174 ff. 25 Rebecca W. Bushnell, Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1990), p. 117. 26 Greenblatt, p. 53. 27 Peter S. Donaldson, "Conflict and Coherence: Narcissism and Tragic Structure in Marlowe," in Narcissism and the Text, ed. Lynne Layton and Barbara Ann Schapiro (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 36-63, 43; Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Part One, ed. J. S. Cunningham (Manchester and New York: Manchester Univ. Press, 1981), II.vii.12-29. 28 My thanks are due to everyone at The Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1991-2. Dr. Martin Wiggins and Dr. Susan Brock were a great help in the research and writing stages of this paper. Prof. Stanley Wells and Dr. Wiggins kindly reviewed the paper and gave their advice on revision for publication. Lloyd Edward Kermode is a graduate student at Rice University. He is working on ideas of foreignness in Renaissance drama, and on the place of the Rose theater in the popular and elite cultures of London. |