Witches summation

I think I'm going to condense my commentary on “The Examination and Confession of Certaine Wytches,” “The Wonderful Discovery of the Witchcrafts of Margaret and Philip Flower,” “The Wonderfull discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch,” and The Witch of Edmonton to one post, especially since my comments are in regards more to general themes of evil; hopefully my concluding sociological/philosophical thoughts don't sound too much like a high freshman who has just discovered Logic. Moreover, this evil is almost entirely defined by the traditional religious views of Early Modern England. In fact, everything deemed monstrous we’ve studied so far seems to connect back to some concept of religious monstrous – babies, bizarre births, the Jew, the Turk/Muslim/(blanket term for anyone from the East), the African, monstrous women in their baby killing or in their sexuality or in any other terms of domestic violence, same-sex relationships, transvestites and cross-dressing, witches – it all stems back to offending the status quo as set by religion. Sometimes these offenses are on a social level, especially in regards to class (as is the case with cross-dressing [in an attempt to appear of a higher class, especially a woman aiming to act like a man] or in same-sex relations [again, where the concern is that a man of a higher class is having relations most often with his servants, obviously of lower class]), but the class system in question is one established predominantly by the religion of the time, and so an offense of class is ultimately still an offense of religion. However, nowhere are these transgressions more clear than in the persecution of witches, as they represent a direct association with the devil, the ultimate religious monster.

Elizabeth Sawyer is clearly constructed as a witch, but her reactions, especially in The Witch of Edmonton are most interesting. Having been label "witch," she almost seems to revel in the role. History has shown us now that, as a witch, a woman had no recourse. She could confess and blame others, but this did not assure her any sort of real salvation, especially since it would typically end with the condemnation of many other women. And, if a woman were to fight such accusations, she would certainly perish, one way or another. Thus, Sawyer lives up her damnation, much like Katherine lives up her role as "shrew" in The Taming of the Shrew, or as Caliban in The Tempest revels in his role as the bane of humanity and society, talking up large threats of rape, pillaging, and murder. These words are just that, though, fallible, only accurate within context, and just as likely to be prideful posturing on behalf of the speaker as they are truth.

My roommate is sick right now. He came in contact with a friend who went to Mexico. Does he have swine flu? Almost definitely not. However, such a fear is nearly tangible right now in the wake of mass hysteria over what is more or less an imagined threat (at least for us citizens of the developed United States). This doesn't change the fact that we look for causation of problems in ways where we can either easily deal with it, or if not blame it on a larger ideal that we know we can't directly defeat, and to which we must resign ourselves. The Crucible is an incredible example of such mass hysteria, where everything that goes wrong, no matter how trivial, is blamed on witchcraft. Crops die - witchcraft. A horse runs off - witchcraft. A girl is deathly sick - witchcraft. A bundle of wood comes undone off the back of a wagon - witchcraft. Yes, the inconvenience of having to pick up a few logs is blamed on witchcraft, and as a result an innocent girl is hanged. I don't think hysteria has a more appropriate example. Or, in order to either deal with or ignore our real problems, we invent fantastic problems. Abigail Williams is scorned by her former lover, John Proctor. However, Williams won't let this die quietly, and so she ignites an enormous witch hunt to revenge her unrequited love as well as to cover up her attempts to conjure spirits and cast spells, create potions to regain her former lover. Someone in class brought up the interesting allegory of swine flu as witchcraft, created to cover up our very real economic crisis and possibly deflect tension in regards to further firings and business failings.

And, when we're faced with such adversity, we often try to pin logic and reason on the most illogical events. For example, the dog in The Witch of Edmonton is inferred to be perhaps the familiar of witch, as he appears throughout disaster. But what if he is just a dog, wandering along, and the excited tones of human voice attract him? When the World Tradedemonic, Center towers collapsed, people swore to see the face of the devil in the clouds of smoke and ash. Is this reasonable, is this logical, or is this a case of hysteria and of people seeing what they want to see? It is easier to resign oneself to the idea of a spiritual evil opposed to the morally superior United States (or Early Modern England, as it were) than to accept the fact that we were attacked by a terrorist organization, by people that hate us and want to kill us and who may attack again. We are willing to turn a blind eye to the real threat because we have to deal with it if we acknowledge it, and further we have to deal with it on a more immediate level, on the social and emotional level, both individually and as a nation. But, if the enemy is a supernatural evil, we needn't worry, because God is on our side and we are infallible.

As an interesting tangent, I was reminded in the discussion of Tom the dog of a quote from The Usual Suspects: "Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. [Ironic, this is a monster in the context of our class] Some say his father was German. [Also somewhat ironic, as I'll discuss Nazi Germany below] Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, poof. He's gone." Perhaps my rationalizing, such as that of Tom as just a dog, and my explanations, like that of mass hysteria, are simply ingenious conventions this great and global evil has created to fully dupe our civilized, apathetic/atheistic, modern society. Perhaps the Early Modern English Church had it right, but the Romantic period and the quest of knowledge and learning and science and industry and growth have blinded us, perhaps the Devil is real and his old tactics of witchcraft and monstrous births, of attacking us through "false" religions (oh, wait, don't many of us still hold this belief in regards to Islam?) and instead has gone into hibernation. Because if we're so quick and sure to assign evil against God to the Devil, and the Devil disappears, so does evil to God. And if there isn't conflict against God, if there aren't these evils for the Church to warn us against, all of a sudden its role is greatly diminished, it has less power and authority, we don't "need" it anymore. But I digress...

All this gives me some interesting insight into the psychology behind evil. Cuddy, the simpleton, isn't swayed by the "evil" of Tom the dog. Rather, he attributes his ability to talk to that of the dogs of Aesop's fables. To put it simply, Cuddy doesn't give the dog power (albeit perhaps because he is too stupid to fear the dog), and so the dog has no power over him. How true this is of nearly all fear and evil, especially that which we tend to perceive as immediate. Zombies, ghosts, that which go bump in the night - whether you believe in such matter or not, its power over you is only that which you give it in the form of fear. And because the rest of the town fears Tom, Tom has power over them as a devil-dog. To misquote a cliche, Evil is in the eye of the beholder.

To that end, what is evil? What is right and wrong? Does truly, inherently evil exist? If so, what dictates it as such? Certainly there are individual evils - these are highly subjective and open to anyone's interpretation. At a higher level there are societal evils. In Early Modern England these are nearly all dictated by religion, and so often they are classified as monstrous or explained away through monstrous phenomenon. This tactic is interesting. In the case of the Turkish monster, for example, "evil" is defined as Islamic, but the Turk likely had a reversed definition, viewing Early Modern England Christians as "evil." While evil to an entire society, this is still a very subjective evil. Or monstrous babies, representative of God's wrath. What we now know to be genetic anomalies of nature, a function of the probability in gene mutation, was viewed as God's response to sinning parents, sinning individuals, sinning England. There isn't anything truly monstrous about these babies and they are not the product of evil, but they are constructed as such by their society. Tied to these subjective definitions of evil is always some sort of personification. Tom the dog, the Devil coming to seduce women into sexual and spiritual debauchery, the looming, unspoken threat of a more powerful Ottoman empire, or the seedy underworld where the Jew inhabits, biding his time and striking as a guerrilla against "good" Christians. And, as I've mentioned, these socially dictated evils of Early Modern England are defined by the reigning religion, and so any sort of monster is ultimately a religious one.

But what about universal evils? What about things that would always be considered wrong? Even here there is a loophole. Genocide is wrong - always. This is a statement that I believe finds universal appeal. But even here, this evil is justified within the context of a very specific society: Hitler and the Nazi party felt as if they were making a better world through genetic cleansing. And in the dog eat dog world of West Africa today, one can easily justify robbery and murder because it is necessary, because "if I don't do it, someone else will," and even more convincingly "if I don't do it, someone else will...to me." To take a sort of Buddhist approach, the extermination of insects from our homes is something we would generally find acceptable, but it is, in a literal sense, genocide. Do lesser developed central nervous systems negate the value of life? Do these same rules apply to a developed CNS made less so, as in brain damage, in individuals born with Down Syndrome, in comas? Or are we again speaking of a subjective, societally based evil, where the society is humanity as a whole?

So I'll end my blog (except for my research blogging) with this: Early Modern England is a prime example of a society that defines its evils in universal terms, assuming that said society's values are universal. Again, this is the power religion played during the period in defining right and wrong for the society as a whole, and indeed because these values are based in spiritual world of religion, versus the geographical/political/society world of England as part of Europe as part of the world, it was entirely feasible - and in fact could not have made sense any other way - that this moral system was inherently, infallibly true. But, barring the chance that this is the Devil's greatest trick, our modern society tells us that as liberally-minded, anthropologically-correct individuals of a global society, right and wrong are subjective. But perhaps this is another example of social definitions of right and wrong, and our society just so happens to define it as subjective. Perhaps right and wrong can't exist, not out of principle nor the lack of a unified definition, but because society will always interpret right and wrong in whatever way it sees fit; or perhaps, ultimately, universal right and wrong is merely too vague, too abstract. Here I am reminded of quantum mechanics' "many-worlds interpretation": In a nutshell, there are infinite universes, and so anything that could possibly happen will, statistically speaking, play out in one, or any, of these universes. That's a whole other can of worms, though, and I'll spare you from my attempts to explain and expound on something I don't understand. Maybe we simply aren't enlightened enough to fully comprehend such a divergent subject as the nature of evil.

Or maybe this is all silly rambling, maybe I'm wrong on all accounts. Maybe they're all right. All that's left here is the illustrative power of literature to encompass any subject, simultaneously answering as many questions as it raises. And such are the Monsters and Curiosities of Renaissance Literature. Thanks for reading.

Same sex relations

The Trial of Lord Audley and Edward II both present the Renaissance view of homosexuality, and I found it very interesting how progressive it is, in a sense. Rather than a binary decision (a view that seemed popular until the 80s/90s when gay rights activism really became mainstream), the early modern period seemed to view it as a spectrum, much as is the popular theory today. Granted, the act of sodomy is still demonized, and the fervor with which it was prosecuted leaves no doubt the intolerance for homosexuality, but it was fascinating nonetheless how there was a sort of "don't ask, don't tell," closeted (pun intended) acceptance of homosexuality. In the Trial documents specifically, I thought that the rape was downplayed not in order to make it seem like less of a crime, but only to heighten the atroscity of sodomy. Also highlighted was the fact that Lord Audley had relations with men of a lower social order and how his actions were "against the peace." The heirarchy of religion so permeates Renaissance soceity that sodomy, a private affair, causes harm to the public, because it was believed to disrupt the laws of nature, and more importantly, of God. However, Lord Audley's actions also disrupted the social heirarchy of the time, and so his actions were offensive on so many fronts.

On the other hand, it seems as if Edward III's time spent with the mother and other significant women is somehow suggestive, as if Edward II's preference for male favorites was something genetic that would be passed down to his son; or, as if a boy that spends too much time in the company of women has a greater risk of having homosexual relationships.

The justification for male relations through Classical literature is also interesting. It seems common knowledge that the Greeks in particular viewed women as deformed men and that the only true realization of human relationship came about between two men, and these beliefs still exist, at least in part, in the Renaissance.

Perhaps my favorite part of Edward II is how Marlowe using hunting as an allegory for gay sex, and how the hunter becomes the hunted. This inversion of roles exists in both scenarios, as one male must necessarily take on the gender role of female during sex. In this sense, the hunter (read: male sexual agressor) must become submissive. Gaveston likening his relationship with Edward II to a hunt is thus very appropriate.

Gaveston, Edward II, and Monty Python

Gaveston's initial soliloquies remind me a little of this Monty Python scene...

It all comes back to religion

It was really interesting to see how the story of the hog faced woman was treated and how it was framed. It did indeed have a sort of fairy tale quality about it (despite the less than happy ending) and it seemed to be treated as a curiosity for the sake of a curiosity. I found it in stark contrast to the monstrous baby pamphlets. In those, the monstrous birth is of course the subject of the pamphlet, but I found the focus was always on monstrous religion. Ultimately, the monstrous birth was just a means to single out and make a point of religious monstrosities of the time, particularly Catholicism and anti-Independents. And, more generally speaking, monstrous babies served as a curiosity of their own very rarely; they were almost always viewed as a sign of God's wrath towards the parents, England as a whole, humanity in general, etc., and never as just a strange happening.

Don't tease God...

... or else you'll be forced to wander the earth with a cross burnt into your forehead, telling of your fate. Or, more appropriately for our reading, you'll have a deformed twin growing out of your abdomen. Such seems to be the author's implications in "The two inseparable brothers." This ballad is set to "The wandering Jewes Chronicle," the story of the man who shouted at Christ while he was on the cross. The tale goes that this man is the "Wandering Jew" and is forced to wander the earth telling his story, and it is found in many forms throughout literature, such as Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and there are even connections to the famed ghost ship "The Flying Dutchman." Given the Renaissance view on monstrous births, it is almost certain that a conjoined twin, especially one so deformed, was viewed as a sign from God, mostly likely his wrath towards either the fully formed twin, the parents of the twins, or England as a whole. In this way, the fully formed twin would have been the Wandering Jew, the deformed twin the burning cross on his forehead, his burden to bear and story to tell. Both stories involve a man bearing the burden of sin in a physical manifestation, traveling and sharing his tale, his life serving as a warning against tempting the wrath of God. I found it very interesting the author created this subtle link simply by setting this ballad to the Wandering Jew tune, but perhaps it would have been a link more easily recognized by the original audience.

The Ranters Monster

I'm amazed at how well crafted The Ranters Monster is as a work of anti-catholic propaganda. It opens with an account of Mary Adams and the terrible things she's done, and her blasphemy would surely have offended many of the original readers. Likewise, the following tales all relate individuals engaged in fornication, blasphemy, or otherwise offending God in general. However, the author, in the very end, includes almost as if it were an oversight "One thing I had almost omited[sic]..." the story of how Mary Adams was a Papist! It is as if the entire pamphlet were to set up a feeling of unrest and proper indignation toward heathen individuals, and then in the very end we find out that, gasp, Mary Adams' worst sin was that she doesn't support Independents! The way the author includes this as if it were an almost forgettable afterthought reinforces its strength - surely the author didn't "almost omit[sic]" this story, and even if (s)he had, the author wouldn't have so casually mentioned his or her near folly. Instead the author does a great job of utilizing language to develop a feeling of unrest, and then at the very end redirect the readers' outrage to a specific group, all while cleverly concealing his or her true intentions: from the start, this work was designed to smear Catholics, not to relate stories of monsters and strange happenings. In fact, it's interesting to see the progression the author creates in Mary Adams. She starts out devout, honest, and little by little falls away from "normal" Christianity as seen by the Renaissance. Eventually she joins varies sects, becomes very sexually promiscuous, and is eventually characterized as completely insane. Given modern knowledge of psychology, it is almost certain Mary Adams had some mental imbalance, but I doubt this would have been known in her own time - in the end, all of her strange and monstrous behavior is credited to her words against the Independents, and it seems pretty clear the author wants the reader to believe that her political/religious views were the sole cause for her insanity and blasphemy.

Alice

Maybe it's because I'm looking for it, but I've found a lot of stuff Marlowe and Shakespeare wrote to be pretty cunningly subversive to Renaissance norms, supporting pretty liberal and open minded philosophies that didn't seem to really exist, at least in any strength, until much later - mostly in the form of ironic or sarcastic caricature of minority groups such as Jews, Muslims, Turks, and women. And, even though Arden of Feversham doesn't have have an author attributed, I feel the same way about this work - especially since many attribute the play to Shakespeare. Alice is an interesting and engaging character much in the same way Matilda is in The Monk; even though she is "bad" and "evil," her character is cunning, complex, and very smart, able to think for herself and work independently for her own means. In this way she also reminds me a little of Tamburlaine.

I find myself not really caring that she has her husband killed so much as I find it interesting she believes that love transcends social class and that she is willingly to actively take steps to determine her love life, instead of letting it be passively dictated. The first point is interesting, as Arden condemns Mosby because he aspires to rise higher than he was born, but does so in a way reminiscent of how racial and religious other are lumped, insulting and degrading him in a way that reminds me of how Barbaras and Shylock are treated in the first acts of Jew of Malta and Merchant of Venice, respectively. Interestingly, while this play seems to intially be about an affair and lust and love, Arden and Mosby's conflict revolves around class - that's why Arden hates Mosby, moreso than because of the affair, and in the end when Arden is killed Mosby seeks revenge on insult rather than to woo Alice.

I think it's a contradiction in that women were viewed as the "oversexed" gender in the Renaissance period and yet the view is also that women were relatively passive in relationships during this period. And again, maybe it's because I'm looking for it, but there seems to be a lot of sexual references that vary between clever and blunt, and they all made me laugh a little (my favorite being "Why should he thrust his sickle in our corn...").

As usual, I'll end with my favorite use of language in the play. When Mosby defends himself to Arden, he says "Measure me what I am, not what I was." But he was a tailor, and he uses the term "measure," a pun I don't think I got the first time around but I think is hilarious.

What kind of hero is Tamburlaine?

Tamburlaine himself is a very round and complex character. My immediate reactions were that he was a proto-Byronic hero. Tamburlaine is the hero of the play, is suave and well worded, but there seemed to be something fatally flawed in his character, sort of a Manfred, but bent on the destruction of others rather than himself. After the first few scenes Tamburlaine appears in, he seemed to resemble an Old English hero – strong, conquering, well-worded and invincible, without any true opposition, loss, or weakness. Ultimately, though, I’ve decided Tamburlaine is an Antichrist figure. Tamburlaine resembles both the invincible Old English hero and the tragically, secretly flawed Byronic hero. Despite the fact that Tamburlaine is continually constructed as hero, he is evil, power hungry. In 2.7, Tamburlaine explains his power-lust with great eloquence, “Still climbing after knowledge infinite, … Until we reach the ripest fruit of all.” He is a true Renaissance overreaching hero, and his ambitions seem to go against God’s design – but he’s so damn persuasive that he seduces Zenocrate, his enemies, and even the Renaissance audience by using “white,” pure, frozen imagery to describe the beautiful (ex. Zenocrate), and thusly appealing to Marlowe’s audience. Tamburlaine calls himself the “scourge of God,” and lives a life that parallels but opposes that of Christ. They are both born of rural parents, Christ a carpenter and Tamburlaine a shepherd. I think the most compelling evidence for Tamburlaine as Antichrist involves his followers: Christ drew in disciples with promises of persecution, explaining that they would have to give up their worldly possessions; Tamburlaine, on the other hand, promises crowns, riches, and glory to those that would follow him. Even Zenocrate opposes Mary Magdalene, the former a princess Tamburlaine defiles, the latter a whore Christ figuratively turned into a princess. Tamburlaine even mimics the most contemporary example of an Antichrist. Hitler used the power of words to compel his followers and induce an entire nation into an anti-Semitic fervor, backing up strong words with a strong military presence – but his greatest power lied unmistakably in his charismatic ability to orate. Nevertheless, this all makes Tamburlaine an incredibly round, dynamic character that charms even a modern audience on at least some level.

Tamburlaine

Marlowe’s treatment – and, I suppose, Renaissance views – of race are curious. While the Jew is demonized, the Muslim is revered. I think the connections betweens Jews and money and between Muslims and military force are largely responsible here. The fear of Jews manifests itself in lore of poisoned wells and kidnapped children, whereas the Islamic nations posed a significant and real threat. And, along those lines, the Jewish threat was perceived as very real, but didn’t really exist, while the Islamic threat seemed to be less realized but in actuality was very great. These fears even seemed to be echoed today, with a strong perception of an Islamic military (or terrorist) threat and the sort of conspiracy theory idea that the U.S. government and the nation of Israel have a political, and more influential financial relationship.

My favorite lines come not from Tamburlaine, but from Techelles in 1.2.52-54: "As princely lions when the rouse themselves, / Stretching their paws, and threat'ning herds of beasts, / So in his armor looketh Tamburlaine."

Marlowe's use of language

Tamburlaine so far reinforces Marlowe's wonderful command of the English language. Even though he wrote in the Early Modern period and the use of language in that period is different, often times radically so, than our current style, his clever word choice and subtle character development through spoken words leaves me chuckling to myself or otherwise impressed with Marlowe's writing. I like how Marlowe develops Tamburlaine as an opposite to Mycetes and Cosroe, and the witty (on Marlowe's behalf) banter between the brothers, who are both very full of themselves and, for the most part, completely stupid. Tamburlaine's posturing by laying out his gold and how he so swiftly talks his opponents into supporting him are all beautiful examples of both Marlowe's command of the language in form and in content.

a renaissance... mostly

The past few weeks I've been doing a good bit of research on Africans and race in Early Modern England. As this is the Renaissance, I associate it with an explosion of culture, art, music, literature, trade, and general expansion. It seems so contrary, then, that race seems to be lumped into the single definition "moor," where if it isn't English White Christian normal, it is "other," and all "other" is lumped together as if it is all the same. Given the emphasis on diversity of, say, art forms, or as a result of trade, I would expect there to be more focus on different cultures and races - even if the Early Modern English didn't appreciate the diversity, I'd at least expect them to acknowledge its existence, even to generate different sets of stereotypes for different elasticities, rather than combining African, Muslim, Turk, Indian, and all other forms of other. I think this came about largely due to pure ignorance - most in Early Modern England had no exposure to racial other, and in fact there's evidence that Africans weren't even in England, at least with any significant presence, until 1660, well after the start of the Early Modern period. Nevertheless, there is exposure enough to generate stereotypes about the "moor," especially as sexually licentious, and therefore evil (unless, of course, cause and effect are reversed, and they are evil, and therefore sexually licentious).

random observations from Jew of Malta

Barabus is kind of like the serial killer in the Saw movies: he doesn't necessarily commit the crimes (at first), but only constructs situations where death is impossible to avoid under the guise of a game. When Barabus "springs up" from the dead at the end of the play, it is similar to the first Saw movie where the serial killer, posing as a dead man on the floor throughout the movie, comes back to life, having orchestrated a twisted game.

If I were the director for a postmodern acting troupe, Playmakers or something similar, I think I'd stage this play in a very nihilistic tone. I'd play up all the comic elements and all the absurdity, but paint it all within a very grime world with the imminent threat of destruction: In 3.5 Ferneze is discussing with the Callapine a possible pending war, ending by saying "And naught is to be looked for now but wars, / And naught to us more welcome is than wars." Earlier, in 1.2.105, Barabus says "of naught is nothing made." Despite all the absurdity over religion, money, race, Other, hypocrisy, etc. the characters of this play have constructed a world where there is a true outside threat, but concern of money and social status are more important to its characters, and they are all ultimately destroyed.

I found it really interested how Ithamore develops as Barabus's "imp." As the play progresses, Ithamore picks up more of Barabus's manerisms, language, etc. Barabus is constantly using pig and hog imagery in terms of disgust, a habit that Ithamore develops by the end of the play. While they seem to connect in their first shared scene, Ithamore's claims of debauchery all mirror Barabus's - indeed, it would appear Ithamore engineers a background that would appeal to Barabus. The best evidence of this involves Ithamore's word choice based on his audience - when alone, he speaks in elongated blank verse, when around Bellamira and Pilia-Borza he speaks as they do, and is always sycophantic towards Barabus; he mocks Pilia-Borza by reversing his own words against him, much like Barabus does by inverting scripture when insulting Christians.

Marlowe's language is really brilliant. When he satirizes his own poem ("be my love..."), he is at the height of black comedy, where truly nothing is off limits. When appealing to the two holy men, Barabus's language mimics that of the Psalms, which would surly have moved the men's hearts. Barabus's bad imitation of a bad French attempt at English shows a great understanding of language, and even small word choices, like when Barabus exclaims "Corpe di dio!" show deep levels of meaning - how insulting it would have been for a Jew, and especially a Jew named Barabus, the name of the man exchanged for Christ, to cry out "the corpse of [and note he uses a lower case 'd' in 'dio'] god!"

Jewish Persecution

Why is it that, throughout most of modern history, the Jew has been object of criticism, of persecution, and of hate? Both The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta give satirical examples of the Renaissance view of Jews - but in this satire seems to be a hint of truth. Blamed for the death of Christ, it seems Jews have been more hated in the last two thousand years than any other socio/religious/ethnic group. The Holocaust and the current situation between Israel and Pakistan (and the history leading up to said conflict) are very obvious examples of the persecution of Jews, but the stereotype of Jew as money hungry, greedy, etc. have existed at least since the Renaissance, if not before, as is evident from our class texts. Even today most people can think of a handful of jokes about Jews, and these are still associations between Jews and money, especially jobs involving money, as is displayed by our current pop culture: shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy poke jokes, Jerry Seinfeld has based a large part of his comedic success, etc. While these representations aren't necessarily malicious, they do hearken back to a time when such accusations were meant to do harm. Why are Jews such a popular target?

Demonizing the Jew

I found it interesting how Marlowe decides to demonize Barabus - quite literally even. Barabus often references the fact that he is "framed of finer mould than common men...For evils are apt to happen every day." At the start of the play, Machevill says that Barabus' "money was not got without my means." Their tie is more closely exposed a few lines later: "And let him not be entertained the worse / Because he favours me." Given the Machiavellian stereotype - willing to do anything to succeed, even the ruthless and immoral - one could argue the evilness of the Machevill in this play. In fact, one might view Machevill as the devil, and Barabus as having sold his soul - he does in fact have much more wealth than anyone else, enough even to buy the entire island of Malta, but doesn't wish to do anything with it but hoard it. And if Barabus is a minor demon of the satan Machevill, I guess that makes Ithamore a sort of imp, willing to do his master's bidding, his dirty work, if you will (like poisoning a nunnery...). In fact, I think Marlowe uses the dialouge between Barabus and the other jews to set Barabus apart from jews in general as a particularly evil figure; he is evil for evil's sake, not because he is jewish, as is supported by the stark contrast between Barabus and the other jews in the play.