ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines some of the ways The Jew of Malta parleys the rich links between war and commerce in early modern London into entertainment that swerves back and forth between amusing and disturbing an audience. For more than two centuries the Knights protected Christian merchant ships and pirated Turkish and other Islamic ships in the region. The Knights made Malta 'virtually a school for war'. Malta is a brilliant choice of setting for Christopher Marlowe's concerns. In the sixteenth century it was the second Mediterranean base of the Hospitallers, one of three Roman Catholic orders of monk-soldiers who were commissioned by the pope in the twelfth century to crusade against the infidels. Marlowe implies what Enlightenment scholars would later say, that peaceful contact among nations usually diminishes prejudice and violence in the world.
