The Jew of Malta (Broadview Editions)

First performed by Shakespeare’s rivals in the 1590s, Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta was a trend-setting, innovative play whose black comedy and final tragic irony illuminate the darker regions of the Elizabethan cultural imagination. Although Jews were banished from England in 1291, the Jew in the form of Barabas, the play’s protagonist, returns on the stage to embody and to challenge the dramatic and cultural anti-Semitic stereotypes out of which he is constructed. The result is a theatrically sophisticated but deeply unsettling play whose rich cultural significance extends beyond the early modern period to the present day.

The introduction and historical documents in this edition provide a rich context for the world of the play’s composition and production, including materials on Jewishness and anti-Semitism, the political struggles over Malta, and Christopher Marlowe’s personal and political reputation.

• The Sonnets (The Pelican Shakespeare)
• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (Norton Critical Editions)
• Sula
• Frankenstein
• Edmund Spenser's Poetry (Fourth Edition) (Norton Critical Editions)
• The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia: (The Old Arcadia) (Oxford World's Classics)
• Epicoene Or the Silent Woman (Regents Renaissance Drama)
• Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do
• Frankenstein (Signet Classics)
• The Spanish Tragedy