"The Jew of Malta" and "The Merchant of Venice": Two Readings of Life

Abstract

Whenever The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice are staged in close juxtaposition (as in 1965 summer season at Stratford-upon-Avon, role of great Jew in both being superbly taken by Eric Porter), audience is vividly provoked to reflect on two radically differing sorts of dramatic mind. The plays, it is true, have much in common. In both, riches and power they confer are a theme to be explored. In both, traffic of world and excitement of exotic places offer imaginative enlargement far beyond what is actually seen; this is an instance of that emotion of multitude which W. B. Yeats defined as the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of half-seen world [beyond] little limited life of fable-a sense of mysterious range essential, Yeats thought, to all great art. In both plays a victimized Jew seeks bloody revenge against a professedly but questionably Christian world (each man, in E. M. W. Tillyard's phrase, utterly and irretrievably alien) and in so doing is felt to have a case. In both, a virtuous daughter abandons her grasping father for a Christian allegiance and is execrated; and in both, in a sensational coup de theatre, villain falls on threshold of triumph. Shakespeare owes Marlowe much, both in choice of material and in many echoes which show how his assimilative ear had taken rich suggestiveness of his contemporary's style. Yet differences are profound. Marlowe cuts a singleminded and powerful cleft through his startling material. Shakespeare, myriad-minded and richly humane, explores varying shades and colors which make up human nature. Marlowe, in a play impelled by dynamism of duplicities, rivets us to intense theme of vengeful outwitting. Shakespeare, with seemingly nonchalant daring, interweaves two plots, one a fairytale romance of quick