Bringing the house down: religion and the household in Marlowe's Jew of Malta

Abstract

Christopher Marlowe's depictions of religious conflict engage with major political and national issues, but they also acknowledge the domestic implications of such conflict. In sixteenth‐century England, theological dissent split households as well as nations, and Marlowe introduces his audiences to characters who cite religious precedents to justify domestic treason: committed in the name of religion, their actions fracture families, and turn servants against masters. Marlowe's interest in households devastated by religious difference is most evident in The Jew of Malta. As this article argues, Malta's households are destroyed by characters who use religious rhetoric to rationalise self‐interested and anti‐social agendas: the anti‐Semitic Ferneze, seizing Barabas' property; Barabas, killing a daughter who varies from him in religion; and Ithimore the Turk, betraying his Jewish master. This article suggests that Marlowe's play responds to contemporary experiences of religious persecution, in particular the Protestant state's campaign to eradicate the English recusant household, and concludes that Marlowe is, within a domestic setting, exposing the hypocritical appropriation of religious rhetoric by characters selfinterestedly pursuing purely secular advantage.