The Jew of Malta (Style)

Style

Acts

The Jew of Malta is a five-act play. The exposition occurs in the first act when the audience learns of the injury done to Barabas. By the end of act 2, the complication, the audience has learned that Barabas will not be satisfied with the money he has recovered. He wants revenge on all the Christians in the city and is plotting to have the two young men, Lodowick and Mathias, murder one another. The climax occurs in the third act when these young men die, Abigail converts to Christianity, joins the convent, and is subsequently murdered. The murder of the friars and Ithamore’s betrayal of his master provide the falling action in act 4, and the catastrophe occurs in the last act when Barabas overreaches his goal and finally dies in his own trap.

Character

Characterization is the process of creating a lifelike person from an author’s imagination. To accomplish this the author provides the character with personality traits that help define who he will be and how he will behave in a given situation. The Jew of Malta moves away from this strict definition, since the characters are not well-defined. The audience does not really know or understand the character as an individual. For instance, Barabas is a stereotype, a caricature of a greedy Jew, the usurer who was well known to the audience.

Genre

This term refers to types of literature such as mystery, science fiction, comedy or romance. The Jew of Malta is officially a tragic drama, according to its title page, but many scholars now refer to it as an example of extreme satiric or black comedy.

Plot

The plot provides the author with the means to explore primary themes. Students are often confused between the two terms; but themes explore ideas, and plots simply relate what happens in a very obvious manner. Thus the plot of The Jew of Malta is the story of how Barabas was wronged by the Catholic governor and so vows revenge upon the entire city, even sacrificing his own daughter. But the theme is that of greed, corruption, and religious depravity.

Setting

The location for Marlowe’s play is Malta, which is important, since the English audience considered almost any location outside England to be suspect and filled with corrupting forces. This was especially true of any location that was controlled by Catholics.