Violence, ritual, and the execution of time in Marlowe's The 'Jew of Malta'

Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta complicates early modern ideas of ti me, constructing it as a force under rather than beyond human control. This inversion of time's power joins other patterns of inversion in the play, s pecifically moments of ritualized violence in which time is overcome. These moments, writes Mircea Eliade, devalue concrete, quantifiable time in thei r communion with an eternal, unfathomable time. Barabas especially uses tim e even as he rails against it, or displaces its destructive, transformative aspects with his own machinations. His employment of time-delayed poisons, for instance, renders time a violent instrument, one which depends on view ing not only the possibilities of the present, but (as Barabas puts it) 'ca sting with cunning for the time to come.' Though ultimately undone, Barabas maintains a dominating attitude towards time that is transferred by the en d to the Duke, Ferneze. The willful violence that destroys so many characte rs, including Barabas, nevertheless persists in the Duke, suggesting that e ven as time runs out for the former, it remains contained and controlled by the latter, a victim and not a victor in the recurrent cycles of human vio lence.