Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and the Anxiety of Influence

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the influence of Christopher Marlowe on William Shakespeare in the light of Harold Bloom’s theory of influence. The researcher attempts to study aspects of originality and sameness in the two plays: The Jew of Malta (1589) and The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598). The researcher tries to understand the character of the Jew in both works and to inquire whether Shakespeare follows Marlowe’s characterization of the Jew in order to explore the influence of Marlowe on Shakespeare. The researcher intends to study this theme using the theory of influence approach as discussed by the American critic Harold Bloom in his two books, The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975). Bloom suggests that creativity and authorship are not an appreciation of past writings, but rather an inspiration. Bloom attempts, in these two books, to explore the influence of the predecessors on the descendants. Readers, according to Bloom, attempt to know the relationship between texts. During this process of reading, they interpret the new work as a different work from the earlier one. 
               The study is divided into three parts: the first part is a general introduction to the theory of influence as introduced by Harold Bloom in his two books entitled, The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and A Map of Misreading (1975). The second part deals with Shakespeare's anxiety of influence in The Merchant of Venice. The third part deals with greed, hatred and revenge in the characters of Barabas and Shylock. The researcher attempts to prove that Shakespeare was influenced by Marlowe in his portrayal of the Jew, but his treatment of this character was different in some aspects the researcher seeks to show in this paper. This theme, to the knowledge of the researcher, has not been explored.