Dealing With an Unfortunate Reputation
Vile Passéist brings Marlowe to Winter
by Dan Bray
In many ways, the Jewish community’s eventual acceptance into 19th-century society must have been more terrifying to the predominantly Christian population than the minority’s previous isolation. Jews were suddenly hard to recognize, their integration meaning that they were no longer relegated to the fringe of society (ghettos, for example) or forced into traditional professions: “In the period from 1840 to 1900 the British image of the Jew progressed from a collection of stereotypes ⎯ the financier, the peddler, the sharp entrepreneur, the rather shady ancillary of the machinery of the law ⎯ to a more accurate representation of a Victorian bourgeois with distinctive religious practices and traditions”. Furthermore, Jewish involvement in global trade was on the rise, especially when it came to importing foreign goods (such as diamonds, coral, and spices) to Europe, a fact which makes the opening scene of The Jew of Malta more realistic (or if you are a 19th-century, Christian businessman, threatening.)
