“There is no sin but ignorance”: Reconsidering Anti-Semitism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta
“There is no sin but ignorance”: Reconsidering Anti-Semitism in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

Summary/Abstract: Since the Middle Ages there has always been a continuous interest in the Jews in English literature. Apart from Christopher Marlowe, other great writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and James Joyce have all created Jewish characters with varying degrees of prejudice. Yet for more than four centuries, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta with its compellingly effective representation of its title Jew, Barabas, has remained the most controversial one among all the works dealing with the Christian-Jewish antagonism. As a result the question of anti-Semitism has always been the popular concern for critics ever since. This will also be the very problem to which this paper intends to give a plausible answer. In this paper, I will combine a historical approach and a textual analysis to see if The Jew of Malta is anti-Semitic. Because there have been varying responses to the play, critics from different schools of interpretation will be illustrated, and their comments will be elaborated. I will also analyze Marlowe’s other plays and consider the ways Jews are mentioned in these plays to enhance the credibility of my conclusion of his attitude towards Barabas. Reinterpreting these plays from different angles, I will clarify the general misconceptions regarding The Jew of Malta and offer a new perspective on Marlowe’s work.

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