Malta im englischen Drama der Shakespeare-Epoche. Handels-und Reiseverkehr als Ursachen literarischer Phänomene – diskutiert am Beispiel von Christopher Marlowes The Jew of Malta

In the late 16th century the island of Malta and its rulers, the Knights of St. John, started to feature in a considerable number of English comedies, plays and dramas. Certainly it was no coincidence that the same period witnessed the appearance in the Mediterranean of the two new “superpowers” in world trade, England and the Netherlands. In fact it was then when the grand masters of Malta developed new politics to open up their island for the foreign market. This paper tries to show how besides the increasing number of British travelogues and their hard look at the facts and the physical appearance of Malta also the English drama and play of the late Elisabethan and early Jacobean period responded to this development. The centre of discussion focuses on Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta.