Barabas as depicted in Marlowe's the Jew of Malta

Barabas is the protagonist of Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta” which is a tragedy and revenge play that satirizes the willingness of people to put aside moral and ethical principles to achieve their goals by whatever means possible. He is a wealthy Jewish merchant who is unrelenting in his efforts to gain revenge against his foes and retrieve his confiscated wealth. 

However, Barabas is never a tragic hero. His heinous conspiracies and plots greatly outweigh the gravity of confiscating his wealth. These injustices cannot justify in any way his obsession with vengeance and cruelty. He is a scheming manipulator who feels no pity for his hapless victims and a greedy old man who guards his wealth with all his might and main.

Barabas's only motivation is gain back his riches by any means. Gradually, he grows to loathe his Christian enemies and notions of vengeance begin to consume him. Being vengeance-obsessed, he mercilessly poisons an entire convent of nuns, along with his daughter, not to mention his other wicked schemes.

Now let’s have a look at his role and delve deep into the realm of his horrific plots:

When the Turkish sultan’s son Selim Calymath arrives to the island of Malta o levy the tribute for the elapsed ten years, the Maltese governor Freneze cannot produce it immediately but he promise to pay within a month. The tribute has accumulated to a considerable sum over the last ten years. After the Turks leaves, Frenze decide to collect it the Jews of Malta; each Jew must give up half of his property.

When Barabas objects, his entire estate is confiscated. Consequently, he plots to retrieve part of his wealth with the help of his only daughter Abigall. She manages to enter the nunnery, formerly babarabs mansion, and retrieves her father’s hidden fortune. Mathias and Lodowick have fallen in love with Abigall, and Barabas promise his favors to each. He contrives a plot to have Mathias and Lodowick kill each other, and they foolishly do.

On knowing of her father’s scheming and the death of her lovers, Abigall enters the nunnery once again. So Barabas poisons an entire convent of nuns, along with his daughter for fear of her betrayal. He sends Ithamore, his Turkish salve, to the nunnery with a pot of rice laced with a deadly powder. Two friars know, via Abigall, of her father’s plots. When they confront his with his crimes, he cunningly tells them that he would like to repent and convert to Christianity. Naturally, he will contribute the entirety of his fortune to whichever monastery he enters. Being from two different monasteries, each tries to win Barabas allegiance, and end up killing each other.

Freneze refuses to pay the tribute to the Turks and thus rebels against them at the advice of the Spanish. The Turks wage a war on Malta.

 As Barabas accomplice, Ithamore knows a great deal about his plots and begins to blackmail him. So he poisons him as well. Barabas meanwhile has been captured but he feigns death and leads the Turks into the city. The Turks offers him to be Malta’s governor but he declines it. Then he decides to return Malta to Frenze and contrive to massacre the Turkish forces who fall in the trap as well. However, his plot fails miserably. He finally tastes his own poison of hatching conspiracies and then dies. He falls through the trap door and into cauldron which is the climax of his villainous acts.

          All things considered, Marlowe depicts Barabas as the cruelest and wickedest man under the sun. Shakespeare does the same in his depiction of Jews in his plays. The merchant of Venice is just a case in point. Like Barabas, Shylock was a notorious moneylender who conspires to kill a Venetian Christian, Antonio. Each of Barabas and Shylock has a single daughter.  Apparently, the two plays lend themselves to each other in many ways.