The Merchant of Vengeance (Shakespeare & Smythe 4)

"'Tis the man that I have soured on, more so than the work, although in truth, after this insufferable exhibition, I doubt that I shall be purchasing any more of his pamphlets at the bookstalls. However, what I had said about his plays was what I had felt about his plays, even prior to this encounter. I was never very fond of them. 'Twas his pamphlets that I liked. They seemed much more direct and colourful, and not at all pretentious. He may write well, I do not know, for I do not presume to be a judge upon such matters, but as for how his work plays on the stage before an audience, one need not be a learned university man to be able to determine that. His plays have not done well for us. At least, not until you had doctored them somewhat. And even then, they have not drawn much of an audience, unlike Marlowe, who packs them in with his Tamburlaine and his Doctor Faustus and his Jew of Malta. His plays are so exciting that people cannot seem to get enough of him."

"Aye, for an Englishman, Kit is very much a Roman," Shakespeare said with a smile. "He gives them bread and circuses upon the stage. And therein, Tuck, lies the rub, you see. The audiences for plays have changed. Perhaps men such as Tom Kyd and Kit Marlowe have changed them by whetting their appetites for something new, a brew more heady than the small beer they have hitherto imbibed. Perhaps these new poets have merely responded to their jaded appetites for something more by perceiving their thirst and thus pouring stronger beverage for them. Either way, there is no question that Greene's day has come and gone. In their excesses on the stage, Kyd and Marlowe have exceeded him, so to speak. What remains to be seen now is what shall exceed them."

"It seems difficult to believe that anything could be much more excessive than Kit Marlowe," Smythe said wryly.

Shakespeare grinned, knowing it was not just Marlowe's plays Smythe was referring to. The flamboyant young poet's name had become nearly synonymous with debauchery and decadence. After a chance encounter with them in a London pub, it was Marlowe who had steered them toward their first jobs with a company of players. He had seemed like a wild man then, and in the few intervening years he had only grown even more rebellious and intemperate. Although his plays were now all the rage in London, he was treading on very dangerous ground with his outrageous behaviour and public utterances.

"Marlowe has only cracked open the door," said Shakespeare. "It remains for someone else to kick it open fully. I have said before, and I believe it still, that the time for jigs and pratfalls on the stage is past. Each new production of an old standby from our traditional repertoire falls flatter than the last. The groundlings have seen such things before, and they are tired of them. They are ready now for something different, something better. Marlowe, for all his cleverness and undoubted gifts, only gives them something much more grand. He gives them spectacle, which is why Ned Alleyn so relishes playing his work. Marlowe writes speeches that a bombastic player like Ned can seize between his teeth and tear into like a rabid hound. The audiences love it. 'Strewth, I love it, as well. When he is fully in his element, Ned is a joy to watch, for all that he can often be insufferable to know. Yet mark me well, it shall not be very long before the novelty of Marlowe's grand excesses also starts to pale, and then what shall we feed these hungry groundlings?"

"What?" asked Smythe with interest.

"Meat," said Shakespeare. 'We shall feed them meat."

"Meat?"

"Aye, once they are done with bread and circuses, my friend, they shall want meat. Something with more sustenance and substance. And I shall do my utmost to provide it for them."

"And just how do you propose to do that?"

"By being a very careful cook," said Shakespeare, "and not just tossing things haphazardly into a pot without giving due consideration to how the flavours marry. 'Tis that blend of flavours that gives a dish its fullest texture. Consider Marlowe's Tamburlaine, if you will, the very apotheosis of cruelty. Not since the ancient Greeks have we seen such terrible savagery portrayed upon the stage. And then witness Barabas, Marlowe's Jew of Malta. He slaughters more people than Caligula, each murder more gruesome than the last, until he meets his end in the last act by falling into a cauldron of hot oil and thereupon delivers his final speech, all whilst being boiled alive, mind you! Now I ask you, Tuck., as a man who has worked long hours at the forge and doubtless knows, how likely is one to declaim a bombastic, dying soliloquy whilst one's flesh is being cooked?"

Smythe chuckled. "Not very likely, I fear. When one's flesh is being burned, one is much more likely to scream with agony than deliver up a fustian speech. Bur then the audiences do not seem to mind that overmuch."

"Granted, 'tis because they are being given something different, something novel," Shakespeare said. "And they are hungry for such novelty at present. But in time, methinks that they shall look upon such things askance. Tamburlaine is cruelty made manifest in man, but how is man made manifest in Tamburlaine? Barabas, as we have agreed, is the very embodiment of evil, but take away that evil and what do you have left?"

"A man who has been wronged?" said Smythe.

"Aye, perhaps," said Shakespeare, "but then where is he?" Smythe frowned. "What do you mean, where is he?"

"Surely, not upon the stage," said Shakespeare, with a shrug. "Aside from the fact that he is bent upon revenge, and that in this quest no evil seems to be beyond him, what else do we truly know of him?"

"Why… that he is a Jew, I suppose."

"But then how do we know that Barabas is a Jew?"

Smythe frowned again. "Why, we know he is a Jew because we are told he is a Jew. I am not certain what you mean, Will."

"Well, then, let us ask ourselves, what is a Jew?"

"One who is not a Christian, I suppose," said Smythe. "One who has rejected Jesus." He shrugged. "I cannot say much more than that for certain, for methinks that I have never met a Jew."

"And you are not alone, for neither have most Englishmen," said Shakespeare. "The Jews were expelled from England some three hundred years ago, in the time of King Edward I. What few Jews remained behind had all converted, though whether such conversion was a matter of faith or of expediency is another matter altogether. I, for one, know little more of Jews than you do. One hears the sorts of things that people say, but then in truth, these sorts of things are little different from the manner of speech they bruit about the Spaniard.. or the Flemish or the French, which is to say that most of it is likely arrant nonsense. We English seem to dislike foreigners, simply because they happen to be foreign. They mayor may not be dislikable in and of themselves, but that is quite beside the point. The fact that they are foreign is enough for us. Hence, we dislike them."

"Whether we truly know anything of them or not, you mean."

"Just so," said Shakespeare. "Marlowe wished to present the audience with something evil on the stage, a character whom they could loathe and despise and fear all at the same time. Thus,. he gave them a Jew, someone who was foreign, thus engaging the English predilection to despise the foreigner; someone who was not a Christian, thus invoking the one thing Catholic and Protestant alike could both agree to despise; someone who already has the reputation of being so undesirable and disagreeable that nearly all his kind have long since been driven out of England. Ergo, they must be evil. And, to add the crowning touch, he bestowed upon his Jew the name of Barabas, a name fraught with hatred of literally biblical proportions. And lo, there he stands before you now upon the stage," said Shakespeare, gesturing dramatically toward the street in front of them, as if he had just conjured Marlowe's character up out of his imagination. "All that is left for us to do is clothe him in a black robe and skullcap, add a nose like a promontory, and give him a wig of black tresses falling down about the ears in ringlets. Hola! Barabas, the dreaded, evil Jew of Malta! Boo! Hiss!"

Smythe laughed.

"But that is not a man, you see," said Shakespeare. "That is a masque, a Morris dancer, something all done up in bells and ribbons, nothing but a caricature. That is Marlowe's Tamburlaine, but merely in another costume. And yet, who is he?

Who is this Jew?" he asked rhetorically, waving his anus in the air. "What does he think? What does he feel? Has he a wife at home, a child? Does he love them? Does he worry about them? Does he have fears of his own that keep him up at night? And if he is, indeed, as evil as Kit Marlowe paints him, then what has made him so?"

"All very good questions," Smythe replied, nodding. "But 'twould be somewhat tiresome to answer all those questions for the audience in the prologue of a play, would it not?"

"Not if they were shown the answers," Shakespeare replied. "Shown the answers? How?"

"As a part of the unfolding of the action of the play," said