1

Two Rebellious Jewish Daughters: Abigail in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and Jessica in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

By Mark Elliott Shapiro

2

I Introduction

Both Abigail in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and

Jessica in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice rebel

against their fathers and their Jewish faith. Both daughters

display considerable energy; however, unlike Jessica,

Abigail is silenced, victim of her own father.

In this paper, Abigail will be compared to her biblical

namesake; it is difficult to compare Jessica with her

biblical counterpart, Iscah. Unlike the biblical Abigail,

who is fleshed out as a character in 1 Samuel, Iscah is

mentioned only once – and without any fleshing-out of her

character – in Genesis 11:29. However, as figures whom their

fathers either sacrifice or want to sacrifice, both

Marlowe's Abigail and Shakespeare's Jessica can be compared

to Jephthah's daughter.

II The issue of loyalty

3

Abigail is initially loyal to her father Barabas and,

despite her abhorrence of his role in her lover's death, she

is unwilling to betray him. In contrast, from her first

appearance in the play, Jessica displays a basic disloyalty

and a desire to rebel against her father. The loyalty that

Abigail feels towards her father is expressed in an intense

activism that is contrasted with her subsequently passive

role as victim. This contrary duality can be compared to a

similar feature in the biblical characters of Tamar

(Genesis), Jephthah's daughter (Judges), and Abigail.

Although she is present on stage for only three of the five

acts, Abigail is as dynamic – in a positive sense – as her

father, Barabas is in his evil, Machiavellian, way. First,

she is intensely loyal, both as an obedient daughter, and

even, after she learns of Barabas’ engineering of the deaths

of her two suitors (including Don Mathias, whom she loved),

as a disillusioned 14-year-old who abandons her family, her

4

religion and any chance of conjugal bliss by becoming a nun.

Second, like the biblical Abigail, she is prepared to

intervene to save the significant male figure in her life.

For the biblical Abigail, that figure is her malevolent

husband, Nabal, whom the young David, before his becoming

King of Israel, intends to kill; for Marlowe’s Abigail, it

is her father, whose entire wealth has been confiscated so

that Malta can pay tribute money to the Turks. Third, like

Tamar and Jephthah's daughter, Abigail is a victim. She dies

a martyr’s death: Her conversion to Christianity and

decision to become a nun out of disillusionment with her

father and with Judaism and out of a sincere devotion to

Christianity supply the reasons, in Barabas' twisted mind,

for murdering her.

Loyalty and a readiness to intervene express the active side

of Marlowe's Abigail; however, like the biblical Abigail,

her activism is ultimately stifled, and, like Tamar and

Jephthah's daughter, her activism comes to an abrupt halt

5

when she is condemned to die by a paternal figure. In

feminist terms, Abigail's activism is terminated by a member

of the more powerful sex in her society – her father, and it

is the passivity of her role as victim that overshadows the

activism that she demonstrates in various ways.

As noted above, there are two phases in Abigail's loyalty to

Barabas – before she discovers the fact that he masterminded

their deaths and after that point.

The moment she appears on stage, we are made aware of her

intense loyalty and devotion to her father. After learning

of the governor’s confiscation of all his assets, Abigail,

in her first speech in the play, tells her father:

Not for myself, but aged Barabas;Father, for thee lamenteth Abigail.

(I.ii.230-231)1

1 All references to the play are to the text appearing in English Drama 1580-1642, selected and edited by C.F. Tucker Brooke and Nathaniel Burton Paradise (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1933).

6

However, her expression of this loyalty is not mere lip

service or a glib message of consolation to her father.

Immediately following that statement is her declaration of

remedial action:

But I will learn to leave these fruitless tears,And, urg’d thereto with my affliction,With fierce exclaims run to the senate-house,And in the senate reprehend them all, And rent their hearts with tearing of my hair,Till they reduce the wrongs done to my father.

(I.ii.232-237)

Athalya Brenner concentrates on two issues connected with

the presentation of women in the Hebrew Bible: women's

sociopolitical status and roles in biblical society and the

development of female stereotypes and paradigms. She writes:

“Tamar and Ruth place the welfare of the family they have

joined above their personal interest”2; similarly, Tamar and

2 The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), p. 119.

7

Ruth take grave risks and do so courageously.3 Abigail

demonstrates the same kind of loyalty to her father.

In proposing to use the power of words to rescue her father,

Abigail is paralleling the action of her biblical namesake

in 1 Samuel 25, who seeks to rescue her husband Nabal from

the fury of a young David who has not yet ascended the

throne of the Kingdom of Israel. However, there are three

major differences.

First, Marlowe's Abigail is prevented from going ahead with

her plan by her father, who tells her:

No, Abigail, things past recoveryAre hardly cur'd with exclamations.Be silent, daughter, suffrance breeds ease,And time may yield us an occasionWhich on the sudden cannot serve the turn.

(I.ii.238-242)

3 Ibid., p. 40.

8

Before setting out to beg David to spare Nabal, the biblical

Abigail does not consult with her husband, who presumably

would have prevented her from carrying out her scheme.

Second, whereas Marlowe's Abigail relies solely on the

passion of her diatribe, the biblical Abigail buttresses her

eloquence with the gift of a huge amount of food to David

and his band of warriors. Third, whereas Marlowe's

adolescent Abigail intends to use emotion as her rhetorical

instrument, the biblical Abigail employs logic and avoids

histrionics.4

4 On the biblical Abigail's wisdom, eloquence and talent for manipulation, see, for example, the brief discussion in Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible (Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill, 1993), pp. 52-53. Writing about the biblicalAbigail's eloquence, Haya Feigenboim Ben-Ayun begins her article by stating that “Abigail's speech is a marvel of rhetoric – a an amalgam ofaesthetics and perception” (“Art and Meaning in Abigail's Speech,” Beit Mikra, 149 [January-March 1997], p. 1; in Hebrew). Furthermore, in her speech, observes Feigenboim Ben-Ayun, “Abigail expresses her political creed” and “reveals her expertise in the politics of the Kingdom of Israel.” It is safe to assume that, had Marlowe's Abigail appeared in the Maltese Senate, she would have based her “argument” on daughterly concern rather than on political considerations, which, from the Machiavellian standpoint, actually favored the cynical expropriation of the assets of a Jew, who was regarded as an alien and who apparently wields great influence; thus, he could even be perceived as a potential threat to the island's regime by Malta's leaders. (Both assertions appear separately on p. 3; the page numbering for this article is in accordance with what appears on the Mikranet database website from whichit was downloaded: http://mikranet.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=11299.)In The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: JSOTPress, 1985), p. 40, Athalya Brenner describes the biblical Abigail's

9

When Barabas begins to plot against the Christian regime

that has robbed him of his wealth, he commands Abigail to

obey him totally:

Thou perceiv’st the plightWherein these Christians have oppressed me.Be rul’d by me, for in extremityWe ought to make bar of no policy.

(I.ii.270-273)

Abigail’s immediate response is to go beyond her above-

mentioned initial plan for remedial action and to offer an

even more dramatic proclamation of her willingness to follow

his every order:

Father, whate’er it be to injure them

That have so manifestly wronged us,

What will not Abigail attempt?

(I.ii.274-276)

speech as a “beautifully constructed piece of manipulation, carefully designed to further her own ends (if not, ultimately, those of her husband Nabal).”

10

We soon see her in action, using her dramatic skills in the

service of her father and assuming the deliberately

misleading role of the rebellious, disloyal daughter in her

conversation with the Abbess of the nunnery newly installed

in Barabas’ confiscated home:

Grave abbess, and you, happy virgins’ guide,Pity the state of a distressed maid.Abb.[Abbess] What art thou, daughter?Abig. [Abigail] The hopeless daughter of a hapless Jew,The Jew of Malta, wretched Barabas

(I.ii.313-317)

Her loyalty is also demonstrated when Barabas crudely asks

her to again employ her acting skills – this time in

pretending to be in love with Don Lodowick, the governor’s

son – in Barabas’ plot to avenge himself on Ferneze. Barabas

speaks to her much as a film director would speak to an

actress, instructing her how the particular scene should be

performed:

11

Bar. [Barabas] A word more. Kiss him; speak him fair,And like a cunning Jew so cast about,That ye be both made sure ere you come out.

[Aside]Abig. O father! Don Mathias is my love.Bar. I know it: yet I say make love to him;Do, it is requisite it should be so –

(II.iii.240-245)

Her loyalty even goes as far as her agreeing to become

betrothed to Lodowick in order to further Barabas' plan for

revenge. She totally accepts her father's guidance as to the

correct way – in Barabas' eyes – to treat Christians:

Abig. What, shall I be betroth'd to Lodowick?Bar. It's no sin to deceive a Christian;For they themselves hold it a principle,Faith is not to be held with heretics;But all are heretics that are not Jews.This follows well, and therefore, daughter, fear not. –[Aside]I have entreated her, and she will grant.Lod. [Lodowick] Then, gentle Abigail, plight thy faith to me.Abig. I cannot choose, seeing my father bids.

(II.iii.314-322)

12

When she realizes the gravity of her act, however, Abigail

shudders, exclaiming in a painful aside: “O wretched

Abigail, what has thou done?” (II.iii.26) but she does not

rebel against her father.

When she learns from Ithimore, the Turkish slave her father

bought, of Barabas' part in the death of her lover, Don

Mathias, Abigail does turn against her father; the change in

attitude is immediate:

Hard-hearted father, unkind Barabas!Was this the pursuit of thy policy!To make me show them favour severally,That by my favour they should both be slain?

(III.iii.42-44)

But she becomes deeply disillusioned not only with her

father but also with humanity, including her own people:

But I perceive there is no love on earth,Pity in Jews, nor piety in Turks.

(III.iii.53-54)

13

Despite the traumatic break with her father, Abigail

continues to demonstrate a surprisingly high degree of

loyalty towards him, although she has abandoned him and her

religion.5 When she requests admission as a nun, she knows

that she has good grounds for revealing Barabas' crime;

nonetheless, she is determined not to betray him:

O Barabas,Though thou deservest hardly at my hands,Yet never shall these lips bewray thy life.

(III.iv.79-81)

5 On the ease with which Abigail is accepted by the Christian community as a convert, James Shapiro comments: “It was also clear to Christian theologians that for the Jews who literally circumcised the flesh, the Covenant could only be transmitted through men. This helps explain why Jewish daughters like Jessica in The Merchant of Venice and Abigail in The Jew of Malta can so easily cross the religious boundaries that divide their stigmatized fathers from the dominant Christian community” (Shakespeare and the Jews [New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, p. 120). On the other hand, Shapiro also points out the skepticismthat Christendom felt towards converted Jews and which greets Abigail's declaration to become a Christian and a nun. That skepticism is the reason, according to Shapiro (ibid., pp. 157-158), for Abigail proclaiming on her deathbed, “And witness that I die a Christian” (III.vi.40).

14

That loyalty continues until she dies. Granted, she reveals

Barabas' crime to Friar Bernardine; however, she does so

only because she wants to confess her sins before she dies

and the confession must therefore include her admission of

the fact that she was an unwitting accessory to a double

murder. Furthermore, she forbids Bernardine to pass on that

information, knowing that what is said in confession must

never be revealed, and the friar affirms the confidentiality

of all confessions:

Abig. To work my peace, this I confess to thee;Reveal it not, for then my father dies.2 Fri. [Friar = Bernardine]. Know that confession must not be reveal'd.The canon law forbids it, and the priestThat makes it known, being degraded first,Shall be condemn'd, and then sent to the fire.

(III.vi.31-36)

Thus, when she dies, she assumes that the secret will follow

her to the grave; she cannot, of course, foresee that

15

Bernardine will, in the very next scene, strongly intimate

to Barabas that he has knowledge of that crime.

Seconds before she dies, she demonstrates the depth of her

loyalty to her father (despite his having stagemanaged her

lover's death) when she expresses concern for his salvation.

As a Christian, she firmly believes that, in order to save

his soul, Barabas must convert to Christianity:

Death seizeth on my heart: ah, gentle friar,

Convert my father that he may be sav'd.

(III.vi.38-39)

Marlowe's Abigail displays the same kind of loyalty

demonstrated by Tamar, who remains loyal to her parent-

figure, Judah. Though faced with death, Tamar does not

reveal that the father of her child is her father-in-law,

Judah, and she is willing to die rather than disclose that

secret:

16

When she was brought forth, she sent to her father in law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff (Genesis 38:25).6

By phrasing her message in this cryptic manner, Tamar is

displaying intense loyalty to Judah, because she gives him

the option of not revealing that these artifacts are his.7

On the father-daughter relationship, Anna Beskin comments:

“if we pity Abigail, whose actions are reactions to her

father's machinations, then we are happy that Barabas gets

6 All references to the English translation of the Hebrew Bible are to the King James Version as it appears on line at the University ofMichigan website: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/kjv/.7 Niditch, Susan. In her “Esther: Folklore, Wisdom, Feminism and Authority,” in A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), Susan Niditch analyzes the Book of Esther, stating that “Esther is a passive characterat the beginning of her story who will become an active character later.Helpers, Mordecai and Hegai, guide her career as God guided that of Joseph. Like Joseph, she finds favor with her overlords (2.9). Her majorasset is her beauty, a gift of nature. It might be suggested that as a woman, Esther does display already hints of an author's notion of the exercise of wisdom by a wise woman. She knows enough to take good adviceand to be self-effacing, humble and even-tempered” (pp. 35-36). Niditch's comments on Esther are relevant, I believe, to a discussion of Marlowe's Abigail because the latter is beautiful, as is her biblicalnamesake (according to midrashic literature) and because, like Esther, she agrees – initially – to be guided by a father-figure.

17

what he deserves; however, if we see Abigail as an

ungrateful daughter who abandons her father at a time of

need, then we feel less sympathy for her untimely end.”8

From the very outset, we see Jessica as a rebellious

daughter. However, her rebelliousness is tempered by fear

and shame. In addressing Launcelot, she declares her

dissatisfaction with her home environment, summing up her

sentiments in the terse statement, “Our house is hell”

(II.iii.2).9 When she instructs him to give a letter to her

lover Lorenzo, she cautions him, “do it secretly”(II.iii.7).

The explanation she gives Launcelot for the need for secrecy

- “I would not have my father/See me in talk with thee”

(II.iii.8-9) can probably be interpreted either as an

expression of a basic fear of her father's wrath. It does

not seem likely that her motive in hiding the letter from

8 Anna Beskin, “From Jew to Nun: Abigail in Marlowe's THE JEW OF MALTA,” Explicator, 65 (Spring 2007), 133.9 II.iii.2. All references to The Merchant Venice are to the Signet Classic edition: William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (New York and Scarborough , Ontario: New English Library, 1965. Signet Classic series).

18

Shylock is a desire not to hurt her father; only a few lines

later, in a bitter soliloquy, she vents her true feelings

about him:

Alack, what heinous sin is it in meTo be ashamed to be my father's child!But though I am daughter to his blood,I am not to his manners.

(II.iii.16-19)

She is ashamed of her feelings and even considers herself a

sinner for harbouring such sentiments. However, the solution

that she sees is open defiance and abandonment of her family

and home:

O Lorenzo,If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife,Become a Christian and thy loving wife!

(II.iii.19-21)

No regret can be detected in her voice when, after lying to

Shylock, she states in a brief soliloquy what she is longing

for:

19

Farewell; and if my fortune be not crost,I have a father, you a daughter, lost.

(II.v.55-56)

Furthermore, Jessica's rebelliousness has a cruel, perhaps

vindictive, side to it. To purchase a monkey, she sells the

ring that Shylock received from his late wife Leah before

they were married and which he “would not have given ... for

a wilderness of monkeys” (III.i.115-116). According to Mary

Janell Metzger, in order to join the play's Christian

society, Jessica must distance herself from these perceived

attributes and that, in doing so, she also distances herself

from Christian society.

That Jessica distances herself from sin by blatantly disregarding her father's authority may be necessary, but it is also problematic. For Shakespeare's audience, patriarchal authority was divinely ordained,and it secured the right of princes as well as that offathers. Jessica's disregard for that authority thus creates the first obstacle to a Christian audience's acceptance of her as a Christian.10

10 Mary Janell Metzger, “Now by My Hood, a Gentle and No Jew”: Jessica, The Merchant of Venice and the Discourse of Modern English Identity,” PMLA, 113 (Jan. 1968), 56.

20

III The sacrificial motif

Both Abigail and Jessica can be viewed, albeit in different

ways, as sacrificial figures. Early in The Jew of Malta,

Abigail is presented potentially as a sacrificial victim and

her death, after being poisoned by her own father, can be

seen as a sacrifice. On the other hand, although Shylock

wants to sacrifice her, Jessica survives and remains with

Lorenzo.

Abigail's intense and wide-ranging activism is sharply

contrasted with the passive role that is thrust upon her

when she is fatally poisoned by her own father together with

the nuns in the nunnery established in her family home.

According to Dena Goldberg, Abigail is not sacrificed but is

rather the victim of a murder. Goldberg discusses what she

21

considers a “red herring” that Marlowe tosses to the

audience early in the play:

In the first scene of the The Jew of Malta, the protagonist informs the audience that he has “but one sole daughter,” whom he holds “as dear/As Agamemnon did his Iphigen (lines 136-37). As editors have pointed out, the allusion to Iphigenia sets up a sinister dramatic irony for anyone in the audience whoknows that, according to the legend, Agamemnon sacrificed that very daughter in the early days of theTrojan War. ... The story of Iphigenia seems, at firstglance, to bear only a limited correspondence to the action of the play: Abigail will die as a victim of murder by poison and not, like Iphigenia, as an offering in a ritual sacrifice. And yet the suggestionof sacrifice resonates when in Act II Barabas tells usthat rather than allow Lodowick to marry Abigail, he would “sacrifice her on a pile of wood” (II.iii.54).11

Harry Levin regards the reference to Iphigenia as a bad omen

for Abigail. 12Rather than linking the reference to

Iphigenia with Abigail, Goldberg connects it with Barabas:

“Like Iphigenia, Barabas is elected to save the community at

his own expense, although here the sacrifice is

11 “Sacrifice in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 32 (Spring, 1992), p. 233. 12 The Overreacher: A Study of Christopher Marlowe (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).

22

modernized.”13 In other words, the sacrifice of one's assets

replaces the forfeiture of one's life on the altar. While

she does not apply it to Abigail, Goldberg consider the

sacrificial motif to be central to the play; it is presented

primarily through Barabas, whose fate is the expression of

the “motif of the scapegoat slaughtered for the good of the

community.”14

Notes Goldberg,

The allusion to “Iphigen” is in a way a false lead;

for the suffering of Abigail, who is Iphigenia's

counterpart in the play, turns out to be a minor

event, her death one among many and barely noticed in

the world of Malta, except as the occasion for a lewd

joke.15

To dispute Goldberg's argument, it should be emphasized,

first of all, that the allusion is not really a false lead

13 Ibid., p. 234.14 Ibid., p. 233.15 Ibid. p. 239.

23

at all. In a fascinating act of dramaturgical acrobatics,

the image of Abigail as the dutiful daughter who will do

anything (even perhaps sacrifice her life, if called upon to

do so) for her father, serves to introduce the motif of

sacrifice. Thus, through Abigail, Marlowe does use the

allusion to Iphigenia to lead the audience to perceive this

motif in the play.

Concerning the forced assumption of passivity by Marlowe's

Abigail and her role as victim, both she and Tamar are

condemned to death for a “crime” that a parental authority

figure (Judah, the father-in-law, and Barabas, the father)

has convicted them for. In both cases, the women are

innocent: Tamar's “adultery” is sanctioned by the biblical

narrative and Abigail converts to Christianity and asks to

become a nun not because she wants to punish Barabas but

rather she is disillusioned with life, with her father and

with the Jewish people. Unlike Tamar, who is rescued from

death at the last minute, Abigail forfeits her life.

24

Furthermore, unlike Tamar, Abigail does not even have the

benefit of a trial (Judah, in his capacity as judge,

sentences Tamar to death).

Sharing the fate of the other nuns, Abigail can be viewed as

a sacrificial victim whose death is part of Barabas' plan to

avenge himself can be considered a martyr, who meets her

death because of the religious path she has taken

(converting to Christianity and thereby abandoning her

faith, her family and her father).

Abigail shares the same fate as Jephthah's daughter (whose

narrative appears in Judges 11), condemned to death by the

decision of her father, who feels he must fulfill his

morally unacceptable vow. However, unlike Abigail, who dies

on stage, the fate of Jephthah's daughter is unknown. The

Bible merely tells us that her father fulfilled his vow but

does not inform us that he actually killed her. Furthermore,

the reference to the fact that she never had sexual

25

relations with any man implies that she might have ended up

as a hermit denied contact with human society instead of

being sacrificed – a Jewish version of a nun.

Like the biblical Abigail, Barabas' daughter abruptly ceases

to play an active role and she is silenced. In the case of

the former, the end of activism and the silencing of the

female voice is ushered in by her marriage to David, as

Alice Bach points out:

In spite of the implication that Abigail lived happilyever after with her Prince Charming [David], the vibrant, verbal Abigail seems to have functioned better as the wife of Nabal. While he lived, she demonstrated bravery. She had the power of prophecy. After his death, Abigail's voice is absorbed into David's, much as she is absorbed into his household. Once inside his house, she is no longer a threat or a redeemer to men.16

Although she is also silenced (by her murder), Abigail in

The Jew of Malta manages, Samson-like, to briefly resume her

16 “The Pleasure of Her Text,” in A Feminist Companion to Samuel and Kings,ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), p. 128.

26

activist role: Just before her death, she confesses her sin

(her complicity in the double murder of Mathias and

Lodowick) and asks Friar Bernardine to convert her father in

order to save his soul from damnation.

On the silencing of Jephthah's daughter, Fokkelien Van Dijk-

Hemmes calls attention to the importance of the context [of

the genre of the victory song] “for the way the songs are or

are not quoted ... The 'muting of the daughter in verse 34

[her song is not heard, merely referred to] is ... highly

significant. It points in advance to her actual death....”17

A similar situation applies to Abigail in The Jew of Malta.

Although presented as a potential sacrificial victim (in

Shylock's view), Jessica is neither silenced nor sacrificed

by the end of the play. She displays the same kind of

activism that Abigail demonstrates, although, unlike

17 Van Dijk-Hemmes, Fokkelien. “Traces of Women's Texts in the Hebrew Bible,” in Athalya Brenner and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible. Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill, 1993, pp. 37-38.

27

Abigail, all Jessica's activism is directed against Shylock,

escaping from their home to be with her Christian lover and

stealing from her own father.

Like Abigail, Jessica is eloquent; however, her eloquence is

reserved for Lorenzo, as we can see in their clever repartee

in Act V. Unlike the biblical Abigail and unlike Marlowe's

Abigail, Jessica does not use that eloquence to defend her

family.

Jessica is only potentially a sacrificial victim; unlike

Abigail, she survives and even thrives in the company of

Lorenzo by the end of the play. Thus, the comparison with

Jephthah's daughter is limited. Nonetheless, Shylock's

declaration on finding that Jessica is not to be found in

Genoa is chilling; he is at least prepared to sacrifice her

and does not seem very remorseful – unlike Jephthah – about

the idea. The loss of his wealth has made his so distraught

28

that he seems to have forgotten that he is talking about his

own flesh and blood:

Why there, there,there! A diamond gone cost me two thousand ducats in Frankford! The curse never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it till now. Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! Would she hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin!

(III.i.79-85)

At this particular moment, she is not his daughter; she is

merely a “thief” (III.i.88). And he repeats that opprobrious

name twice in that speech (it appears again in l. 89). On

Jessica's role as sacrificial victim, Michelle Ephraim sees

a connection between “early modern responses to Jephthah in

Judges 11:29-40, a Jewish father honored as a 'hero of

faith' in the Epistle to the Hebrews despite the fact that he

sacrifices his only daughter” and “Shakespeare's ambivalent

depiction of the sympathetic would-be murderer Shylock.” She

notes that the Jephthah narrative was of great interest to

29

Christian readers and that, while “Shakespeare does not

explicitly refer to Judges 11 in Merchant, his allusions to

Jephthah's vow and sacrifice in 3 Henry VI and Hamlet make

clear his familiarity with this provocative story.”

Furthermore, Ephraim points out, there is an ironic,

paradoxical link between Jephthah's daughter and Shylock's:

“Like Jephthah's unnamed daughter, Jessica devastates her

father by leaving the family home”; however, unlike the

biblical figure, Jessica's leaving the family home expresses

disobedience.18

“Shakespeare,” writes Ephraim, “emphasizes Jessica's

betrayal of Shylock through his allusions to Rachel's

elopement with Jacob and theft of her father's idols in

Genesis 31, contrasting Jessica's irreverent sale of her

mother's ring with Rachel's safekeeping of the idols, which

early modern exegetes understood as evidence of her ties to

18 Michelle Ephraim, “Jephthah's Kin: The Sacrificing Father in TheMerchant of Venice,” The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 5 (Fall/Winter 2005), 72.

30

her father”.19 Ephraim notes the sacrificial motif in

Portia's reference to the courtship mechanism her deceased

father has installed. Portia's perception of herself as a

sacrificial victim perhaps, suggests Harry Berger, leads her

to require that both Bassanio and Shylock sacrifice

themselves; according to Ephraim, like Shylock, Portia is

both “victim and perpetrator”20. Ephraim argues that

Jessica's disobedience supports the interpretation of

Shylock's would-be sacrifice of Antonio as an “act of

faith”21. Noting a parallel between Medea (referred to in

Act V) and Jessica, Ephraim states that Jessica “leaves her

father for a husband from another land and, despite her

marriage, is also marked as an 'infidel' and a shrew ... in

Christian Belmont”.22

IV Conclusion

19 Ibid., p. 74.20 Ibid., p. 82.21 Ibid., p. 84.22 Ibid., p. 87.

31

There is considerable similarity between Marlowe's Abigail

and Shakespeare's Jessica. Both rebel against their father

and their religion, both demonstrate immense energy, and

both can be viewed as sacrificial figures, although Jessica,

unlike Abigail, is not sacrificed by her father.

Works cited

Primary sources

Marlowe, Christopher. The Jew of Malta in English Drama 1580-1642, selected and edited by C.F. Tucker Brooke and Nathaniel Burton Paradise. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1933. Pp. 193-224.

Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. New York and Scarborough , Ontario: New English Library, 1965. Signet Classic series.

Secondary sources Beskin, Anna. “From Jew to Nun: Abigail in Marlowe's THE JEWOF MALTA,” Explicator, 65 (Spring 2007), 133-36.

Brenner, Athalya. The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative. Sheffield: JSOT Press Department of Biblical Studies, The University of Sheffield, 1985.

Ephraim, Michelle. “Jephthah's Kin: The Sacrificing Father in The Merchant of Venice,” The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 5(Fall/Winter 2005), 71-93.

32

Feigenboim Ben-Ayun, Haya. “Art and Meaning in Abigail's Speech,” Beit Mikra, 149 (January-March 1997). [In Hebrew; downloaded from : http://mikranet.cet.ac.il/pages/item.asp?item=11299]

Goldberg, Dena. “Sacrifice in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 32 (Spring, 1992), 233-245.

Levin, Harry. The Overreacher: A Study of Christopher Marlowe. Boston:Beacon Press, 1964.

Metzger, Mary Janell. “Now by My Hood, a Gentle and No Jew”:Jessica, The Merchant of Venice and the Discourse of Modern English Identity,” PMLA, 113 (Jan. 1968), 52-63.

Niditch, Susan. “Esther: Folklore, Wisdom, Feminism and Authority,” in A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna, ed. Athalya Brenner. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.,pp. 26-46.

Shapiro, James. Shakespeare and the Jews. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Van Dijk-Hemmes, Fokkelien. “Traces of Women's Texts in the Hebrew Bible,” in Athalya Brenner and Fokkelien van Dijk-Hemmes, On Gendering Texts: Female and Male Voices in the Hebrew Bible. Leiden, New York, Köln: E.J. Brill, 1993.