| Venice Preserv'd |
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Plot The play concerns Jaffier, a noble Venetian who has secretly married Belvidera, the daughter of a proud senator named Priuli, who has cut off her inheritance. Jaffier is impoverished and is constantly rebuffed by Priuli. A foreign soldier named Pierre stokes Jaffier's resentment and entices him into a plot against Venice. He introduces Jaffier to the conspirators, led by Renault. To get their trust, he must put Belvidera in Renault's care (as a hostage). In the night, Renault attempts to rape her, but she escapes to Jaffier. Jaffier then tells Belvidera about the plot against Venice, and against her father, the senator. She devises a plan of her own. Jaffier will reveal the conspiracy to the Senate and claim the lives of the conspirators as his reward. Jaffier does so, but the Senate breaks its word and condemns all the conspirators to death. In remorse, Jaffier threatens to kill Belvidera, his wife, unless she can get the pardon of the conspirators. She does so, but the pardon arrives too late. Jaffier goes mad and stabs his friend, Pierre, on the gallows, and then kills himself. Belvidera then dies broken hearted. The play contains a fair number of political asides in it. The character of Senator Antonio is a reference to Shaftesbury , and the grand plot resembles the Gunpowder Plot , among others. The oceanic city of Venice had been used as a stand-in for London before, but the subtext most noticeable to contemporaries was the parallel with the Monmouth Rebellion or the ''meal-tub plot'' (see, for example, Dryden's Absalom And Achitophel ). Success of the play Otway was the toast of London after ''Venice Preserv'd,'' and yet the financial situation of the theater meant that he did not grow wealthy from his work. In 1692, Robert Gould (''To Julian, Secretary of the Muses'') wrote, "Otway, though very fat, starves." ''Venice Preserv'd'' has not survived to the 21st century as a byword for tragedy, but it was one of the best-known and most important of English tragedies for over a hundred years. |
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