and to give an immense sum to the friar’s monastery. The friar accepts the offer joyously, and is inveigled by the Jew into his house, where he is strangled. But the Mohammedan slave, in a moment of merry and amorous expansiveness, betrays his own and his master’s secrets to his boon companions, who immediately inform the Governor. Barabas and the slave are arrested and sentenced to death. The former drugs himself, and, under the impression that he is dead, is thrown outside the city walls. On recovering from the draught, he determines to avenge his wrongs by delivering the city up to the Turks. The Governor and the Knights of Malta are taken prisoners, and the Jew is made Governor. But, knowing that he will never be safe in a place and amongst people that had so much cause to hate him, he purchases peace and more wealth by a second treachery. He offers to invite the Turkish general and his comrades to a banquet and to murder them, while their soldiers are entrapped in a monastery and blown up. The Christians accept the offer, and Barabas felicitates himself on his cunning: “Why, is not this A Kingly kind of trade, to purchase towns By treachery and sell ’em by deceit?” But though they hate the Turk, the Christians hate the Jew more heartily still. They apprise the doomed general of Barabas’ plan, and the latter is, literally, made to fall into the pit which he had dug for the Turk. In his fury and despair the wretch confesses all his sins, boasting of the stratagems by which he had meant to bring confusion on them all, “damned Christian dogs and Turkish infidels” alike, and, having cursed his fill, dies. The Knights exact reparation from the Turks for the sack of the city, and thus the play ends in a triumph for the Cross. The Jew, as has been seen, does not become the villain of the piece, until after he has been made the victim. But the audience is supposed to execrate his villainy and laugh at his sufferings. The author takes good care to disarm pity by painting the Jew in the blackest and most ludicrous colours that he can find on his palette. He endows him with a colossal nose and all the crimes under the sun. Barabas’ cruelty to the poor is only equalled by his insolence to the powerful. He is made to say that he “would for lucre’s sake have sold his soul.” His contempt and hatred towards the Christians is dwelt upon with reiterated emphasis: “’tis a custom held with us That when we speak with Gentiles like you, We turn into the air to purge ourselves; For unto us the promise doth belong.” He instructs his Mohammedan slave: “First be thou void of these affections, Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear, Be moved at nothing, see thou pity none, But to thyself smile when the Christians moan.” He brags that he himself has always acted on those precepts: