ABSTRACT
Through performance, Mak found his role as comic hero and discovered a quirky
form of grace that complicated his relationship to vice and worldliness. Equally
quirky, through utter worldliness and devious malevolence, Marlowe’s Barabas defies
any form of grace other than performance itself, making of his villainy a constant
paradox that complicates the ostensibly tragic nature of his play. In fact, Barabas’s
character so dominates the play and directs the other characters that he overwhelms
the plot and tilts the drama wildly in the direction of improvised comedy. Of course
most of the other characters are individualized villains too, and their malevolent
imperatives-lacking any psychological dimension that might elicit sympathy, or
even Jonson’s rigorous humoral schemes-ensure both satirical variety and surprise
through constantly overstated performance. This chapter will argue that Marlowe’s
characters in The Jew of Malta are wonderfully, wackily, obnoxiously theatrical.
