The Jew of Malta.

Roma Gill's new Oxford edition of Marlowe's few of Malta is a holiday event.

This is quite literally the case, since our leading Marlovian gleefully reports in her introduction to the fourth volume of The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe how she contended with the "strangely unsettling experience" of editing what "must surely be reckoned one of the most imaginative creations of Elizabethan drama": "There were no major textual problems to speak of," yet "Marlowe's play has no starting-point - it comes from nowhere." Eventually, her "uneasiness . . . formulated itself into the question WHY - why Malta?" "In desperation," she writes, "I took a holiday - and went to Malta" (ix).

The holiday proved relaxing because it helped answer her question. Having "no known sources" for its plot, and "no counterpart - in life or in literature - for its protagonist," The Jew originates from "Marlowe's experiences as petty spy' during a visit to Malta (ix, xv). Gill acknowledges that "[m]uch more research is needed," but she reports "one - albeit trivial incident" uncovered by Andrew Vella: in 1581, "an English ship, the Roe, landed in Malta" (xv). She observes that Marlowe knew "a lot about the island" - more than he could have learned in such sources as Ortelius (ix-x). In fact, studies of all sources "confirm the originality of Marlowe's invention" (xi). The same can be said of Barabas, "Marlowe's own multi-faceted creation." Why Malta? Because "in the sixteenth century there was only one place on earth ... that would have given entertainment to such a contradiction of characters" (xiv).

Gill's "holiday" has its costs. By focusing on Marlowe's biography, she downplays such often-cited origins as the real-life Joseph Nasi and neglects both the biblical Barabbas and the textualized Machiavelli (cf. her commentary), and forgets as well what Godshalk and Weil note - that Spenser's Mammon, god of gold associated with usury, demonism, and Barabbas, also tries to sell a daughter.

While "Marlowe and Malta" is the primary topic of Gill's introduction, her secondary topic is "Date and Text." Rather than speculating on a date, she supplies the conventional terminus ad quem and terminus a quo, 1592 and 1588. Rather than collating the texts, she reports that "[c]ircumstances have compelled me to rely on the collations of other editors," citing Bawcutt, Bowers, and Craik. And rather than determining what kind of manuscript underlies Heywood's 1633 quarto, she summarizes the findings of these editors (xvi-xvii). At the close, she identifies her editorial methodology: "Unless misleadingly erroneous, the original spelling and punctuation are retained. . . Evident mislining of verse and prose has been corrected. . . . Proper names have been uniformly italicized. . . . I have not, however, followed Q in its occasional use of italics" (xvii). In light of recent research on the material production of Elizabethan texts, such editorial intervention, however necessary some of it is, cannot conceal its costs.

Gill's "Text" is immaculate, authoritative, and reader-friendly. My main quarrel has to do with her decision to replace Q's "Truce" in Barabas's speech at V.i.88 with Broughton's emendation of "Sluice": "Feare not, my Lord, for here against the Sluice, / The rocke is hollow." Van Fossen retained "Truce," and Simmons argued that the word means "truss," so that Marlowe here offers a "photographic . . . structure . . . of the stage." Like Bawcutt, Gill has not been persuaded by such "metatheater," but, unlike Bawcutt, she offers no record of the dispute. Such reticence controls the volume at large.

Gill's commentary is useful and learned, even if conventional. I do have a few quibbles. She cites Harvey's epigram on Machiavelli for the Prologue without registering the scholarly danger of the comparison. Conversely, for Marlowe's "Infinite riches in a little roome" (I.i.37) she cites only the proverb about great worth in small things and Hunter on Christ in the Virgin's womb - not poverty level annotation but perhaps not gold. To her credit she does compare Faerie Queene II.vii. 17 for "Ripping the bowels of the earth" (I.i.106), even though she neglects the often-reported conjunction with Kyd and the unreported ones with Ovid (Met I.135-40) and "Seneca" (Octavia 417-19). Elsewhere, Gill is alert to Ovidian intertextuality, including one original annotation: for Barabas's comparison of himself and Abigail to Agamemnon and Iphigenia (I.i.135), she cites Ovid's Metamorphoses XII.29 if. The annotation suggests in miniature how Marlowe rewrites Greek (Aeschylean) tragedy as "Ovidian tragedy."

Gill's edition closes with a select bibliography that is more select than one might wish.

Although lacking the detail of Bawcutt or Siemon, Gill's edition is an important scholarly publication, as she and Oxford push ever closer toward completing an annotated, multi-volume edition of The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. This year, include Malta in your holiday plans.

PATRICK CHENEY Pennsylvania State University