Audiobook · read by volunteers
Jew of Malta
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
Read by Ezwa, Jennifer Stearns, Laurie Anne Walden, Anna Simon, Lars Rolander (1942-2016), Lucy Perry, Kevin Vinck, CM Slosson, Miriam Esther Goldman (1991-2017), Ryan DeRamos · 7 chapters · 2 h 21
About the book
Barabas is the richest Jew in Malta, and when the governor seizes his fortune to pay a tribute to the Turks, he decides on revenge. Christopher Marlowe’s play, written around 1589, follows a man who is both wronged and wrongdoer, whose cleverness and appetite for vengeance carry him further and further from any sympathy. It is a drama of money, religion, politics and betrayal, written in the powerful blank verse for which Marlowe was famous, and it mixes dark comedy with violent action. The audience is never quite sure whether to laugh or to be appalled. Seven recordings, about two and a half hours, covering the dramatis personae, prologues and epilogues, and the play’s acts in a dramatic reading by volunteers.
Introduction
Christopher Marlowe (baptised 26 February 1564, died 30 May 1593) was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. He is regarded as the leading tragedian of the generation before William Shakespeare, remembered for the force of his blank verse, for his overreaching protagonists, and for his own early death. The Jew of Malta is generally dated to around 1589 or 1590.
The play centres on Barabas, a wealthy merchant who suffers a grave injustice from the Christian authorities of the island and who answers it with schemes of increasing ruthlessness. Marlowe shows a society in which everyone, Christian, Jew and Turk alike, talks of principle while acting out of self-interest. This makes the play hard to classify. It has scenes of broad black comedy, and it also has moments of real menace.
Readers today will need to take account of the way the play draws on stereotypes of its period, and it is often discussed for that reason as well as for its dramatic power. Its depiction of prejudice and hypocrisy continues to provoke argument.
The recording is by LibriVox volunteers, who take the different parts. It has seven files, starting with the introduction and prologues and then the cast of characters, followed by the acts. It lasts about two and a half hours. It will interest students of Elizabethan drama and anyone who enjoys a dark and daring play.
Public domain
Christopher Marlowe died in 1593: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text