Vexed and tormented by the memories of his lost wealth, the wretched Barabas roams the livelong night, sleepless and homeless, haunting, like the ghost of a departed miser, the place where his treasure is hid; and beseeching the God of Israel to direct Abigail’s hand. At last she appears at a window aloft, and lets the bags fall. Whereupon the Jew bursts forth into an ecstasy of joy:
“O my girl!
My gold, my fortune, my felicity.
O girl! O gold! O beauty! O my bliss!”
Two young Christian gentlemen, Mathias and Lodowick, are enamoured of the Jew’s daughter. Barabas, in the bitterness of his soul, resolves to have both youths murdered: Lodowick as the son of the Governor who bereft him of his fortune, Mathias simply as a Christian. In pursuance of this dark design, he makes use of his beloved daughter. He promises her hand to each of the youths in turn; he incenses the one against the other; and he instructs his daughter to receive them both, and entertain them “with all the courtesy she can afford.” “Use them as if they were Philistines,” he says to her, “dissemble, swear, protest, vow love” to each. No considerations of maidenly modesty need restrain her, for neither youth is “of the seed of Abraham.” She obeys, not knowing her father’s real purpose. A mock betrothal to Lodowick takes place. Abigail plights her troth to the youth; for “it’s no sin to deceive a Christian”—one
“That never tasted of the Passover,
Nor e’er shall see the land of Canaan
Nor our Messias that is yet to come.
For they themselves hold it a principle,
Faith is not to be held with heretics;