A Jew in Malta muses on Dr Faustus, falcons and Warren the rabbit - The Jewish Chronicle

It’s Sunday, the sun is shining, I have unpacked my suitcase from my trip to Malta and hung the dress I’m wearing out to lunch in the shower because the last time I actually ironed anything Uncle Mac was on the radio playing Tommy Steele singing Little White Bull. I’m sitting here with a hopeful Velcro roller in my sun-bleached, beige and lilac hair for looking reasonable at the lunch and hoping Malta will prove inspirational for this column.

The Jew of Malta by Christopher Marlowe sprang to mind. It was the forerunner for Shakespeare’s detestable play The Merchant of Venice. Marlowe was an early influencer, certainly of Shakespeare. It is thought that he wrote some of Hamlet and As You Like It. Marlowe’s father was a shoemaker and Shakespeare’s was a glovemaker. Marlowe set his greedy Jew in Malta, because his Jewish anti-hero Barabas was a rich merchant awaiting the arrival of three ships. Shakespeare’s Antonio took a loan from the Jew of Venice, speculating payback time would come when his ships came in.

There is much talk in Marlowe’s dark satire about a daughter and a conversion to Christianity. He was two months older than WS and they were baptised in the same month. Kit Marlowe was educated at Cambridge, however, and Shakespeare most certainly wasn’t.

Kit died in 1593 in a knife attack, after a pub brawl in Deptford. He was rumoured to be a spy, an atheist, a blasphemer and a homosexual. For any one of these traits, he was, allegedly, taken out by the Queen’s Privy Council. Atheism was much frowned on in Elizabethan times, so his contributions may have been a medieval form of blacklisting. Only AI-Chatbot knows.

He also hosted the quote in his play Dr Faustus: “I count religion as but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance.”

My first theatrical success, at Newland High School for girls in 1960, was in Dr Faustus as the eponymous anti-hero, who sold his soul to the devil. I can still hear the suppressed snort in the assembly hall when I faked the kiss, by neatly by-passing Susan Downing’s chin, and said: “Her lips suck forth my soul. Come Helen, give me those lips again”, receiving an even bigger snort from form 3B and a whoop from both Lower Fourths.

My reviews, in the Hull Daily Mail, were the stuff of legends, fostered by my late mother’s habit of getting the yellowing clip out of the scrapbook drawer at every opportunity. “Maureen Lipman,” quoth their critic Barbara Duncanson, “Remember that name.”

Not for nothing did my elder brother Geoffrey begin his speech at my 60th birthday party with the sentence: “I am the brother of an only child.”

Malta feels weighed down by history. Like Jerusalem it is a golden citadel, built in cream stone and heavily fortified. Whoever had control of Malta had control of the trade routes of the Mediterranean Sea.

It has been invaded and taken over by 20 different invaders including the Phoenicians, Romans, Ottomans, French, and most formidably, the Order of the Knights of St John, who struck a deal with Charles V of Spain to receive Tripoli, Gozo and Malta in exchange for a single falcon every year. I mean I know they fly at 200 miles an hour but still, it was a heck of a bargain. Britain colonised the small but strategic island from 1814 to 1964, but aside from right-hand driving and English pubs, I don’t think they gave it so much as a budgie.

This deal inspired the hard-boiled detective film The Maltese Falcon. I watched this Bogart/John Huston film prior to my departure and was astonished at its lack of action. Wonderful atmosphere and characterful performances but mystifyingly convoluted dialogue in Huston’s script taken from the Dashiell Hammett novel: “If you kill me, how are you going to get the bird? And if I know you can’t afford to kill me, how are you going to scare me into giving it to you?’’

And “Look at me, Sam. You worry me. You always think you know what you’re doing but you’re too slick for your own good. Some day you’re going to find it out.’’

I loved the film but have no idea what happened in it.

There were Jews in Malta in the 4th and 5th centuries who prospered under Arab and French rule but, unsurprisingly, they were expelled in 1492, then allowed back in 1798…same old, same old. Now there is a tiny, largely Sephardic community of between 100 and 200 with, naturally, a Chabad centre. We travelled about by tuk-tuk, motorboat and, amazingly enough, gondola. The Medina is quite fabulous as is the Co-Cathedral, which has a Caravaggio of the beheading of John the Baptist – another fabulous creative who came to a sticky end. For genuine local culture I do recommend the karaoke in the Parrot Bay pub.

St Paul of Carthus may have been one of the first Jews to land there. He was shipwrecked and people brought him driftwood to make a fire to warm his bones. Legend has it that a viper slithered out of the wood and bit him. This had no effect whatsoever on Paul, which the crowd interpreted as a sign that he was a god and converted en masse to Christianity. It all sounds a bit “Malty” Python to me and as ever, the Jews lost out.

The national animal of Malta, oddly, is a pharaoh hound, the national bird is a Blue Rock thrush and the national dish is stuffat tal-fenek, or rabbit stew, which I would decline even without the cloven-hoof and cud-chewing sanction, because I had an apricot coloured rabbit as a pet for some years and if ever an animal was sentient it was Warren. He came into my flat, from his courtyard every evening at 6.30 and munched on an organic carrot. He sat on the same armchair with our aloof Basenji dog Diva, who lethargically licked clean his ears. He could stack coins and pick cards from a fanned-out pack. I loved that leporid and so did Diva, and she didn’t like anybody, including me.

But I digress. In fact, I fear this entire column is one long digression. It reads like Groucho on ketamine. Back to Corrie next week, which feels far less fictional.
Nepo Alert: My daughter Amy Rosenthal’s play The Party Girls - about the Mitfords- coincidentally opens on September 3 at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. Statue of Kit Marlowe outside. Spooky?

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Malta