The Jew of Malta: Annotated

The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe

The play opens with the character Machiavelli, a Seneco ghost based on Niccol Machiavelli, who introduces "the tragedy of a Jew". Machiavelli expresses the cynical view that power is amoral, saying: "I consider religion a child's toy / and I believe that there is no sin but ignorance".

Barabas begins the play in his counting house. Stripped of everything he has to protest against the seizure by the governor of Malta of the wealth of the entire Jewish population of the country to repay the Turks in war, he develops a murderous series, with the help of his slave Ithamore, by deceiving his son. of the governor and his friend to quarrel over the affection of his daughter, Abigall. When they both die in a duel, he gets further angry when Abigall, horrified by what her father has done, flees to become a Christian nun. As a punishment, Barabas poisons her along with the whole convent, strangles an old friar (Barnadine) who tries to make him repent of her sins and then frames another friar (Jacomo) for the murder of the first friar. After Ithamore falls in love with a prostitute who conspires with his criminal friend to blackmail and expose him (after Ithamore drunk tells them everything his master has done), Barabas poisons all three of them. When he is captured, he drinks "poppy and cold mandrake juice" so that he is left for dead, and then plots with enemy Turks to besiege the city.

When Barabas is finally appointed governor by his new allies, he changes Christians once again. After devising a trap for the slaves and soldiers of the Turkish galleys in which they will all be demolished with gunpowder, she sets a trap for the Turkish prince himself and his men, hoping to boil them alive in a hidden cauldron. Just at the key moment, however, the former governor betrays him and makes him fall into his own trap. The play ends with the Christian governor holding the Turkish prince hostage until reparations are paid. Barabas curses them while he burns.