How Shakespeare Writes a Villain Speech: Comparing Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare
I’m going say something very controversial: William Shakespeare was a good writer. Before you smash my keyboard, let me explain. Modern audiences know Shakespeare is great, but they overlook how his greatness improved upon past greatness. They overlook this because Shakespeare’s predecessors are overshadowed.
Before Shakespeare, England’s greatest and most influential playwright was Christopher Marlowe. If baby Shakespeare died of plague, you’d have horrid school memories of studying Marlowe. Although nowadays known for Doctor Faustus, one of Marlowe’s most influential plays was The Jew of Malta (which you won’t find coming to a theatre near you for… obvious reasons). The eponymous villain, the murderous moneylender Barabas, terrified and electrified Elizabethan audiences.
The Jew of Malta is a good play, but Shakespeare improves on it. Let’s compare one of its monologues with one from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.
Here is Marlowe’s Barabas boasting of his sadism:
As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights,
And kill sick people groaning under walls:
Sometimes I go about and poison wells;
And now and then, to cherish Christian thieves,
I am content to lose some of my crowns,
That I may, walking in my gallery,
See ’em go pinion’d along by my door.
Being young, I studied physic [medicine/posion], and began
To practice first upon the Italian;
There I enrich’d the priests with burials,
And always kept the sexton’s [gravedigger] arms in ure
With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells:
And, after that, was I an engineer,
And in the wars ‘twixt France and Germany,
Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth,
Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems:
Then, after that, was I a usurer [money lender],
And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting,
And tricks belonging unto brokery,
I fill’d the gaols with bankrupts in a year,
And with young orphans planted hospitals;
And every moon made some or other mad,
And now and then one hang himself for grief,
Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll
How I with interest tormented him.
But mark how I am blest for plaguing them;
I have as much coin as will buy the town.
- The Jew of Malta, Act II scene I
Let’s turn to Titus Andronicus (AKA the cultured man’s torture porn). Even in Shakespeare’s early, edgy phase, he already knew how to polish his predecessor’s diamonds.
The speaker is the Empress of Rome’s Moorish paramour-cum-assassin Aaron, just before his execution:
Lucius: Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
Aaron: Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
Even now I curse the day — and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse,
Wherein I did not some notorious ill,
As kill a man, or else devise his death,
Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,
Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,
Set deadly enmity between two friends,
Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digg’d up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends’ doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
‘Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.’
Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
- Titus Andronicus, Act V, Scene I
What elevates Aaron’s monologue over Barabas’ lies not in the monologue itself. Shakespeare’s improvement was where he put the monologue. Barabas’ monologue comes at the start of the play, Aaron’s at the end.
Aaron and Barabas’ monologues are incredible and barely credible. Their boasted sins surpass worldly evil and become demonic. Would you believe someone who told you they’d done all that? The playwright must make the audience believe their villains’ words. The difference between Marlowe and Shakespeare’s placement of their villains’ monologues is: Barabas tells you about his sins before he’s shown you any.
Oh, yes, after Barabas’ monologue, he: betrays Malta to the Turks, then betrays the Turks to the Maltese, and poison his allies, his enemies and his own daughter. After his monologue, he commits these sins. Before his monologue, Barabas has: been obsessed with money; refused to fund Malta’s war against Turkish invaders; and treated his daughter like property. You wouldn’t call Barabas’ for a chat, but you wouldn’t call the police either. His monologue has little impact because it has little credibility. Evidence of his evil comes only when the monologue is a faded echo.
Aaron, however, has been piling up evidence for his suicidal “defence”. By the time he gives his monologue, he has: assassinated the Emperor’s brother, and raped Titus’ daughter Lavinia, and amputated Lavinia’s tongue and hands, and framed Titus’ sons for the murder of the Emperor’s brother, and lied to Titus that his sons’ death sentences would be commuted if Titus sends his own dismembered hand to the Emperor, and killed the Empress’ midwife when she discovers that the Empress’ infant is clearly Aaron’s.
Aaron’s monologue thrills because we believe it. We believe it because he has, visibly, “killed a man”, “Ravish[ed] a maid”, and “accuse[d] some innocent”. Why wouldn’t we believe he “digg’d up dead men from their graves, and set them upright at their dear friends’ doors”.
The great artist polishes his influences as they would a first draft. Just as Shakespeare elevated the Vice stock-character from medieval plays into Richard III and Iago, so he elevates Barabas’ boasts from bombast to terrifying life.
