Welcome back for the second installment of Great Works in Evil Literature. I'm your hostess, Lady Unpleasantries, and I loathe and despise every single one of you for making me write this out because you haven't read the originals yourself. Crack a book, damn it.

Today's evil work comes from one of the most wicked writers in history, Christopher Marlowe. You may know him as the author of Doctor Faustus, but today we're focusing on a slightly earlier work. The Jew of Malta is a play written around 1598 or so that offends all three of the major monotheistic religions on the planet. Before you pious types start sending me God-saturated hate-mail, I'm just presenting the facts here, and the facts are that Marlowe hated all religions equally. Chill.

Barabas is one of four Jews living in Malta and, in keeping with stereotypes, is filthy stinking rich. Unfortunately, the city officials have to pay tribute to some nasty Turks, so they seize all of Barabas' wealth and leave him bitter and broke. The logical course of action is, naturally, to take out the Maltese government, which he sets about doing with his Turkish slave Ithamore, who hates Christians just about as much as Barabas.

The governor of Malta, Ferneze, has a son (Don Lodowick) who just happens to be in love with Barabas' daughter Abigail. Abigail happens to be in love with Lodowick's friend Don Mathias. With about as much courtesy as an SUV has for a squirrel, Barabas sets Mathias and Lodowick up to a duel, during which they both kill each other. When Abigail expresses some distress at her lovers' death by her father's plans, Barabas does the equivalent of shrugging and flipping the girl off. Come on, Abigail, this is vengeance. Quit being a whiny little bitch and suck it up.

Abigail decides to screw her father over in the worst possible way after this. She converts to Christianity and joins a convent, which is apparently the Jew's worst nightmare. Barabas takes the only option available to him. He poisons a bunch of rice and kills every nun in the convent , including Abigail. Then, for good measure, Barabas and Ithamore go kill a couple of friars, just for kicks.

Meanwhile, Ithamore has gotten nice and friendly with a prostitute named Bellamira, who convinces Ithamore that he should probably blackmail Barabas. Clearly, when presented with a guy who takes out an entire convent with a bowl of goddamned rice and then strangles a friar with his own belt, blackmail is the best option. Bellamira's pimp, Pilia-Borza, is after Barabas' gold, which mysteriously reappeared after the convent went down in a rice-y apocalypse. (Wonder where the gold came from...) Of course, it's a trick, because you should never trust a prostitute and her pimp. Bellamira and Pilia-Borza tattle to the governor, and Barabas poisons the pimp, the prostitute, and the slave.

After faking his own death, Barabas proceeds to hang with the Turks and help them storm the city, because damn it, it doesn't matter that the Turks have all of his money, it's the Christians' fault! The Turks make Barabas the governor, but Barabas fears for his life (I can't imagine why) and sends for Ferneze. You remember him. He was the former governor whose son Barabas had killed earlier on. In an astonishing and unpredictable twist of fate, Ferneze turns the tables and ends up sending Barabas hurtling down into a boiling cauldron, proving once and for all that it doesn't matter what religion you are. If you're living in Malta in the late 1500s, you're a dick.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Great Works in Evil Literature. If you haven't already lost all hope for humanity, don't worry. You will.

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