As is typical of a tragedy, the mood of The Jew of Malta becomes increasingly bleak over the course of five acts. Initially, the audience may sympathize with Barabas, as his wealth is no doubt unjustly taken from him. Ferneze and his associates in the government clearly have antisemitic motivations, seizing not only Barabas's wealth but also that of other Jewish men in the city of Malta.
However, as the story progresses and Barabas commits murder after murder, the play's commentary on greed and immoral human nature progressively darkens the mood. For modern audiences (and members of the Jewish community in particular), this disheartening mood may further develop as one realizes the full extent of Barabas's antisemitic characterization. He is almost comically evil, celebrating the successful murder of his daughter and other Christians at the nunnery with undisguised glee at the beginning of Act 4:
There is no music to a Christian's knell:
How sweet the bells ring now the nuns are dead,
That sound at other times like tinker's pans!
I was afraid the poison had not wrought:
Or, though it wrought, it would have done no good,
For every year they swell, and yet they live;
Now all are dead, not one remains alive.
Barabas's gleeful reaction at perpetrating such a horrific crime is consistent with his characterization: he is an offensive caricature of the Christian-hating Jewish man, thus embodying the moral inadequacies of Judaism for Marlowe's largely Christian audience. Though the fact that this aspect of the text contributes to the bleak mood was, in all likelihood, not the author's intent, it is nonetheless something that will have an effect on modern audiences.
