SOURCE: Echeruo, Michael J. C. “Shylock and the ‘Conditioned Imagination’: A Reinterpretation.” Shakespeare Quarterly 22, no. 1 (winter 1971): 3-15.

In the following essay, Echeruo compares Shakespeare's characterization of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with Marlowe's rendering of Barabas in The Jew of Malta, examining the relationship of both to stereotypes of Jews.

Irving Ribner's recent comparison of Marlowe's Barabas and Shakespeare's Shylock¹ suggests that the finer conclusions to be drawn from any such comparison need to be restated and made quite explicit. It is true, as Prof. Ribner says, that when comparisons are made between The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta—“and it is perhaps inevitable that they should be—it is usually with the assumption that Shakespeare imitated Marlowe. … To some we have Shakespeare palliating the antisemitism of Marlowe with a more sympathetic portrait of a Jew; to others we have Shakespeare striving to outdo...