Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2025
Chapter 3 demonstrates the centrality of fiscal infrastructures to the action of Marlowe’s plays. His Tamburlaine plays, The Jew of Malta, and A Massacre at Paris all hinge on the agencies created by – and the violence associated with –wealth organized into treasuries. The protagonists of these plays – Tamburlaine, Barabas, and the Duke of Guise – draw attention to their own and others’ treasuries, and their stories underscore both the security and the volatility associated with treasuries in action. In each play, treasuries drive the action by creating security for some through extreme violence to others. For Marlowe, treasuries are central to his depiction of geopolitical existence. Fiscal realities, in turn, represent a primary formal mechanism impacting how Marlowe’s characters – and audiences – experience the antagonistic spaces of geopolitical existence. Marlowe’s awareness of the challenges of implementing sovereignty are thus central to his ongoing project of creating theatrical states of emergency.
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