Deats, Sara Munson and Lisa S. Starks. “‘So neatly plotted, and so well perform’d’: Villain as Playwright in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.” Theatre Journal. 44.3 (1992): 375-389.

We submit that Marlowe shared with Shakespeare and Jonson a deep ambivalence toward his own medium and that his plays, like those of many of his contemporaries, self-reflexively probe, censure, and celebrate dramatic art. Moreover, Marlowe’s ambivalence toward his art and his profession is most vividly embodies in the character of Barabas, the surrogate playwright and villain in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta. Indeed, Barabas may well be the first villain as playwright to tread the Renaissance stage, and, as such, the progenitor of an entire clan of villainous interior playwrights. 378

…The Jew of Malta not only reflects but actually participates in this antitheatrical debate, not only introducing the interior director (or adapting him from his medieval ancestor, the morality Vice), but also dramatizing some of the issues that would be debated throughout the following decades, both on the page and on the stage. 378

Catherine Belsey terms an ‘illusionist,’ perspective—thereby stressing that dramatic reality is always an illusion…

For Barabas, we submit, delight in improvisation and impersonation proves paramount, and it is his obsession with ‘playing’ (not the Machiavel’s desire for power nor the usurer’s greed) that galvanizes his energy throughout much of the play and prompts his final, fatal intrigue against Calymath. 379

Barabas emerges as the surrogate playwright, the mouthpiece through which Marlowe can communicate with his audience, sharing with them the creative process and the sheer joy of playmaking, while also warning them, through Barabas’s spectacular fall, of the perils of playmaking. Lastly, the potency of Barabas’s plays within Marlowe’s play comments on the power of dramatic art to construct reality. 379

If we view Barabas as an illusionist character with psychologically credible drives, we must conclude that, as the play progresses, playing and plotting become for Barabas more and more an end in themselves rather than a means to an end. 380

As a number of commentators have observed, the Jew’s reasoning is not only poor ‘policy’ but also faulty Machiavellism. For although Machiavelli prudently warned rulers not to make themselves odious to their subjects, he also cautioned against trusting an opponent whom one had offended…. Barabas disregards Machiavelli’s caveat and even his own dictum: ‘Great injuries are not so soon forgot’ (I.ii.207) 383

[FN]: speaks for majority opinion when she defines ‘the desire for gold’ as the unifying theme of the play, the force initiating both the drama’s central and its subsidiary plots. Although a number of other critics focus on a Machiavellian power drive as the play’s dominant motif, most of these commentators would agree that the Jew’s fatal league with Ferneze reslts not from adherence to so much a deviation from the credo of Machiavellian ‘policy’. 383

Barabas’s specious reasoning does reflect the attempt to offer credible, prudent motives for irrational impulses, but Barabas’s exultant asides to the audience suggest that these drives are more artistic and directorial than mercenary or emotional. Addicted to histrionics for the sake of histrionics. 384

Like the chronic recidivist who must kill and kill until he is finally apprehended, Barabas must plot and plot until he is finally entangled in his own scenario. It is this mechanical repetition that renders Barabas comic rather than tragic. 384

This incident displays Marlowe’s dramaturgical skill in escaping from a perplexing situation. How can he dispose of Barabas, who as villain/hero of the tragedy must be annihilated by Act 5, since the Jew of fMalta is obviously able to write and act his way out of any predicament? By allowing Barabas to become intoxicated by his own artistic techniques and by introducing a new, more adept playwright with a conflicting script, Marlowe again proves his own adroit craftsmanship. Thus, unlike his villain/hero and dramatic alter-ego Barabas, Marlowe maintains his aesthetic detachment and scripts a play that successfully resolves his dilemma. Consequently, when we observe Barabas constructing the set for what seems to be his interior play-acting as stagehand and stagemangaer as well as play-wright, director and actor—we realize that ironically, he is building a set for Ferneze’s counterdrama. 385

Ironically, Barabas’s obsession with the aesthetics of intrigue leads to an increasing loss of control over his medium, as the Jew becomes less and less the presiding genius and more and more the active participant in his own skits. 385

In this reading, therefore, Barabas becomes a portrait not only of the flawed Machiavel, who falls because he becomes too involved in his plotting and is thus overcome by the more skillful Machiavel, but also of the flawed playwright, who fails because he loses his detachment, becomes too involved in his plotting, produces a bad play, and is ousted by the superior actor-playwright. 386