ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that Marlowe's influence on Shakespeare could manifest itself in a focus exclusively on style rather than on content or on a combination of style and content. The verbal echo from The Jew of Malta discussed in the previous section and the style of Morocco are not the only manifestations in the play of Shakespeare's linguistic sources of inspiration from Marlowe. Marlowe undoubtedly played a crucial role throughout The Merchant of Venice in unleashing Shakespeare's remarkably strong awareness of language, both its uses and abuses. The chapter suggests that the influence of Marlowe's protagonist on Shakespeare's relates primarily to the artistic process that created Barabas as an alien rather than to the specific results of that process. In experiencing The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare was alerted to aspects of dramatic writing that he had to decide whether to accept or reject as Marlowe's rhetorically engaging but psychologically unrealistic characterizations, which he rejected.
