Infinite Riches In A Little Room

Spoken by Barabas the Jew in Act 1 of The Jew of Malta (c. 1590), as he surveys his warehouse stuffed with treasure. The line expresses the Renaissance merchant's ability to condense enormous wealth into portable form — jewels, currency, bills of exchange — that could be held in a single room or even a pocket. Marlowe's Barabas is simultaneously a satire and a portrait: a figure whose commercial genius is admired even as his society excludes and eventually destroys him.