SOURCE: Hauser, David R. “Otway Preserved: Theme and Form in Venice Preserv'd.” Studies in Philology 55, no. 3 (July 1958): 481-93.

[In the following essay, Hauser argues that critics who have complained about the structure and unity of Venice Preserv'd have not considered how Otway's careful imagery and realistic depiction of emotion overcome this supposed lack of coherence.]

Otway's Venice Preserv'd has been repeatedly judged one of the finest of Restoration tragedies, yet almost all modern critical discussions have emphasized the play's defects, thereby producing a confusion as to precisely where the excellence of the play resides.¹ Amid the welter of claims and counter-claims the two most comprehensive and influential criticisms levelled at the play are these: that it merely repeats the artificial formula of heroic drama, being “another linguistic machine to magnify the clash of love with honor”;² and that the “poetic potential” is too low, emotion being presented for its own sake without any relation to the exigencies of the “tragic vision,” that the sentiments are “for the most part expressed not through figurative symbols, but by means of explicit and direct description.”³ Without attempting to explain these criticisms away, it will be the purpose of this paper to demonstrate how Otway partially overcomes the obstructions of the heroic conventions to reanimate the dramatic mechanism of his age, and through an examination of the relationship of imagery to plot, to explore means by which the play may be viewed as more organic and more highly wrought artistically than has previously been allowed. As lumbering and bathetic as it may occasionally be, Venice Preserv'd is constructed of sound materials which structurally and poetically “prop the fall” of the drama as a whole.

Despite the difficulty in defining any complex literary phenomenon simply and accurately, there has been general critical agreement as to the community of formal and thematic features which constitute the heroic drama. According to Dryden (who was working with previous English and French dramas in mind, as well as the relation of the heroic play to the Vergilian concept of epos), the major distinguishing features of the genre are the highly elaborated conflicts of love and honor within the soul of a great man and the epic elevation of style.⁴ Furthermore, “painting the passions” had become the foremost business of the tragic poet; in spite of the critics' Aristotelean emphasis on plot, the tendency in most heroic drama was to utilize plot as a vehicle whereby characters could test and display their emotions.⁵ The ethic of the Cartesian psychology of the passions furnished the rationale for such display. According to this system, all virtue is the result of proper ordering and control of the passions by a reasoned use of the will, all evil a failure to channel the passions.⁶ Thus the strength of an individual soul depends on the strength of the will. A corollary theory, found in Dryden and elsewhere, was that the nobler an individual, the greater the passions.⁷ Consequently, a hero in heroic drama gains his exalted position not by great deeds and noble birth alone, but also through great self-control, a necessary premise to heroic action. Man becomes autonomous and is virtually able to guide his fate by the force of his will. An examination of almost any heroic play will bear out the relevance of the passion theories to the heroic world view.⁸ The greater part of the heroic code can be explained in terms presented by the passion psychology and a good deal of the artificiality of the heroic drama derives from the fact that it is based on such an oversimplified view of human behavior.

Otway does not entirely abandon the heroic code; Venice Preserv'd is constructed upon a central conflict of love and honor, is deeply saturated in the Platonic conventions of friendship which were characteristic of heroic drama, and above all, depends heavily on the heroic concept of personal honor. Jaffeir intimates in the very first scene that he has lived the life of a heroic man, for he describes his rescue of Belvidera five years prior in epic terminology.⁹ When Pierre solicits his aid in the conspiracy, he states that “I am fit for Honour's toughest task” (II, 148). His final act, the “mercy killing” of Pierre on the scaffold, is his daring attempt to regain the attributes of heroism which his betrayal of the conspiracy had lost him. Pierre, whose impetuosity and bravado have been taken for heroism by most readers, constantly proclaims his adherence to the heroic code, especially when he appears before the Senate in Chains:

When you, great Duke, shrunk, trembling in your Palace,
…
Stept not I forth, and taught your loose Venetians
The task of honour and the way to greatness?

(IV, 236-40)

The conspirators believe themselves to be undertaking a vastly noble cause, and when a minor quarrel develops among them, they are thus silenced by Bedamar:

                                        Thieves and Rogues
Fall out and brawl: Should Men of your high calling,
Men separated by the Choice of Providence,
From the gross heap of Mankind …
T'adorn the bravest purpose it e'er smil'd on;
Should you like Boys wrangle for trifles?

(II, 222-28)

Even Belvidera feels the tug of the heroic code. When confronted with the plans for the conspiracy, she immediately apprehends the conflict between her love for Jaffeir and her duty to her father, and it is the latter she obeys as she persuades Jaffeir to expose the plot.

But whereas honor is the ideal, it is rarely sustained in the action of the play itself. The focal point of the tragedy is Jaffeir's failure to uphold his oath to the conspirators, thereby condemning his friends and preserving his enemies. The number of broken oaths elsewhere in the play is astounding. In Act I (298), for example, Jaffeir swears that he will avenge Belvidera's grief at being evicted from their home, yet in actuality he eventually gives her much greater cause for grief. Jaffeir hands Belvidera over to the conspirators as a pledge of his good faith, for if he proves unworthy of their trust they are to execute her, but in spite of his betrayal the execution does not occur. Belvidera assures Jaffeir that she will keep whatever secret is preying upon his mind, yet when she learns of the conspiracy she desires to reveal it at once. Although the Senate swears to pardon the plotters in exchange for Jaffeir's information, it breaks its word and has them hanged. Pierre vows never again to hold “communion, Friendship or interest” with Jaffeir (IV, 365), but in the next act the two become reconciled. Even the grotesquely comic Antonio “resolves” not to leave Aquilina's house, yet he is beaten out immediately after his vow (III, i, 128). While the forswearing of oaths is unthinkable in heroic drama, in Venice Preserv'd the will is not in absolute control of events; emotions war against the will and often counteract it.¹⁰

Otway's more realistic view of human behavior springs from his conception of man's ambivalent nature. At several points in the play he establishes the bases upon which his characters operate. In Act III Jaffeir begins to doubt the good will of the conspirators after he learns that Renault, the leader of the venture, has attempted to rape Belvidera. He says in soliloquy:

Heav'n! where am I? beset with cursed Fiends,
That wait to Damn me: What a Devil's man,
When he forgets his nature.

(ii, 302-04. Italics added)

Man contains great capacity for evil as well as good, as is emphasized by Priuli's utterance, “The vilest Beasts are happy in their off-springs, / While onely man gets traitours, whores and villains” (V, 15-16). In Act IV, following Belvidera's success at persuading Jaffeir to reveal the plot to the Senate, Jaffeir exclaims while contemplating his love for his wife, “Why was such happiness not given me pure?” (85). Man, then, may be good or heroic at a given moment, but his nature is such that he cannot sustain his goodness or heroism. Renault's comment, “Clocks will go as they are set: But Man, / Irregular Man's ne're constant, never certain” (II, 206-07) serves as an epigraph to describe the world in which Venice Preserv'd takes place.

Consequently, Otway's heroes are not invariably courageous and his villains contain some seeds of virtue. Priuli appears in the first act as a merciless persecutor of his daughter and her husband, but by the final act he relents, Lear-like, pledging “I'll henceforth be indeed a father” (116). The Senate, although corrupted by degenerates like Antonio and apparently inured to treacherous practices such as the breach of faith with Jaffeir, can react nobly on occasion; when the conspiracy becomes known, Priuli speaking for the Senate states bravely:

Let's not be tamely butcher'd, but doe something
That may inform the world in after Ages,
Our Virtue was not ruin'd though we were.

(IV, 126-28)

Renault, the sinister caricature of Shaftesbury who lies about his custody of Belvidera when confronted by Jaffeir, has doubts about the moral validity of the conspiracy; in his first speech he ruminates on the dangerous folly involved in satisfying his ambitious urge for power (II, 196-202). Indeed, the nature of the conspirators as a whole is ambiguously presented. From one point of view they sincerely desire to dispose of a tyrannic, corrupt government, they are ideally pursuing the “Common Good.” And when they are executed they all die bravely. Yet Jaffeir comes to realize that a good deal of the motive force behind the plot is the personal discontent of base men. In their first conversation the conspirators reveal their misguided nature by the allusions they make. Pierre refers to Brutus as a “Gallant Man” (a debatable view in a commonwealth threatened with rebellion), and Renault picks up this strand of thought, almost parodying the entire conspiracy:

                    Yes, and Cateline too:
Tho story wrong his Fame: for he conspir'd
To prop the reeling Glory of his Country:
His Cause was good.

Bedamar carries out the implicit comparison:

                    And ours as much above it,
As Renault thou art Superior to Cethegus,
Or Pierre to Cassius.

(II, 247-55)

Even if Brutus' gallantry might be defended, the other figures mentioned are far from admirable—Cateline, who was reported to have “deflowered his virgin daughter,” Cethegus, a dissolute soldier of fortune, and Cassius, who undertook to shake the state because of personal slights.¹¹ Thus the plotters condemn themselves in the very act of reaffirming their own proper motives.

Pierre also partakes of the general self-deception. Possessed of great élan and courage, he seems a totally admirable character, eminently clear-sighted as to the evils and injustices of life. In his first appearance he introduces Jaffeir to a realm of ideas completely new, the universal hypocrisy and innate greed of mankind. He is seemingly dedicated to the cause of humanitarian amelioration. Yet his vision is blurred with respect to the conspirators in that he believes them also wholly dedicated to the “Cause.” Even after he learns of Renault's attack on Belvidera he is so caught up in the impending action that he refuses to look at the evil inherent in the conspiracy. Furthermore, he fails to see that he has entered the plot for purely personal motives—Antonio has purchased his mistress and has lodged a complaint against him in the Senate, which has publicly censured him for violating senatorial “privilege.” Just prior to his execution he refuses the aid of a priest, who, he claims, wishes “to lead my Reason blindfold” (V, 384-85); he feels that he has lived a good life because he has never broken peace with a heaven he does not believe in “by cruel murthers, Rapine, or perjury, or vile deceiving” (376-77). What he fails to recognize is that if the plot had succeeded he would have been responsible for the very crimes he eschews.¹²

Even the “beauteous Belvidera” is not an unmixed blessing. Her love for Jaffeir remains unhesitatingly constant, and she alone among all the characters consistently sees through the sham idealism of the conspiracy. Yet she is peculiarly blind to the masculine concept of personal honor. In her reference to Lucretia (III, ii, 8-10) she too quickly infers that Jaffeir has deserted her; she boasts of her “Roman constancy” and compares herself to Brutus' wife, Portia, yet she cannot understand any possible reason for Jaffeir's participation in the conspiracy; she even believes that Jaffeir is capable of murdering her.¹³ In the final act she is guilty of falsehood when she goes before her father to plead for Pierre's pardon. She does not intimate that the reason she wishes Pierre spared is to preserve her own and Jaffeir's “future Quiet,” but instead plays upon her father's emotions, saying that Jaffeir will kill her unless she performs his will (80-111). Furthermore, she so completely misunderstands Jaffeir that she believes they can return to their former way of life after his betrayal (V, 275-78). Even though she may be skilled in persuasive rhetoric, Belvidera lacks sensitivity to the emotions of others.

Venice Preserv'd, then, takes place in a world of ambivalence where good and evil are inextricably mingled and where the human mind is not always capable of distinguishing between them. In this respect Otway has radically departed from the heroic world view in which the strong will can control its destiny by ordering the passions. Dryden's Indamora can rely on her inner order to meet all emergencies:

Unsetled Virtue stormy may appear:
Honour, like mine, serenly is severe.(14)

But Belvidera, no less “honorable,” is driven mad by circumstances beyond her control. Yet a complex cosmology does not assure complex art; the other objection to the play, that it lacks sufficient poetic strength and that the language is ordered in the interests of passion rather than drama, is the more formidable. While no amount of discussion can alter the diffuseness of much of the verse, it is possible to view Otway's poetic organization as perhaps more profound than has heretofore been allowed, to see an integration of theme and form.

Venice Preserv'd abounds in cosmic references: Heaven and Hell, devils and angels, Creation, the planets. While these images had also appeared in heroic drama, Otway fuses them into a coherent pattern through which a good share of the meaning of the play emerges. At the opening of the play Priuli expresses his hate for Jaffeir, informs him that he is financially ruined, and curses him with, among other things, everlasting poverty: “Get Brats, and Starve” (110). Jaffeir is perfectly willing at this point to continue life on the humble, non-heroic plane so long as he has his beloved Belvidera to share it with him. But he then meets Pierre, who forcibly impresses on him the weight of evil and injustice operative not only in his personal misfortune but in society as a whole, and Pierre thus reanimates the heroic code within Jaffeir. Jaffeir ponders the meaning of what he has learned in a soliloquy which takes the form of a prayer; he asks Heaven why “Thou mad'st me what I am, with all the Spirit, / Aspiring thoughts and Elegant desires / That fill the happiest Man?” (I, 308-15). Yet at the end of the first act he is again reconciled to the humble life by Belvidera.

But Jaffeir has promised to meet Pierre at midnight, and as he goes to the meeting he is filled with the foreboding that he is about to sell his soul to the Devil (II, 66-76). When Pierre gives him a bag of money, “something to buy Pins,” he feels that the Devil is before him (99-100). Pierre praises the “Cause,” claiming “There's no Religion, no Hypocrisie in't,” thereby indicating that Jaffeir is being further drawn away from the Heaven to which he had earlier prayed. Jaffeir swears his allegiance with a mighty oath which irrevocably alienates him from the humble life:

I do, by all those glittering Stars,
And yond great Ruling Planet of the Night!
By all good Pow'rs above, and ill below!

(177-79)

Now Jaffeir, says Pierre, has become “fit to disturb the Peace of all the World, / And rule it when it's wildest” (186-87). Jaffeir becomes one of the conspirators who ironically adumbrate their own alliance with evil by the remark, “Hell seize that Soul amongst us, it can frighten” (II, 212), although later they are all frightened by Pierre's vehement defense of Jaffeir. When Jaffeir surrenders Belvidera as a pledge of his good faith he indicates that the non-heroic life is far behind him:

Oh Belvidera! we must change the Scene
In which the past Delights of Life were tasted:
…
                              we must learn to watch
Our labours late and early every Morning
…
Rise to our toils, and drudge away the day.

(II, 367-72)

By joining the conspiracy Jaffeir has ended his Adam-like innocence and has embarked upon what is figuratively established as the work of the Devil. Belvidera understands this: to her the plotters “look as Hell had drawn 'em into League” (III, ii, 100), but Jaffeir realizes how far he has been corrupted only after Belvidera exposes Renault's attempted rape. Then Jaffeir fervently desires release from his “pact”:

What, be a Devil! take a Damning Oath
For shedding native blood! Can there be a sin
In merciful repentance?

(III, ii, 270-72)

Yet Jaffeir cannot extricate himself from his pact merely by repudiating his aid in the conspiracy, for he has impetuously sworn an oath to his friend and has given up his wife as a hostage. He would “rather see the face of Hell, / Than meet the man I love” as he goes to the Senate to expose the plot (IV, 97-98). But he does meet Pierre, who refuses to let him tell of his attempt to gain full pardon for the conspirators, and who strikes him, exclaiming, “What whining Monk art thou? What holy cheat” (287), referring to a previous conversation and classing Jaffeir with the generality of mankind, who are hypocrites. At this point Jaffeir is roused from his lethargic acceptance of sin to self-defense, not on the grounds that he has acted rightly, but that he still loves and sympathetically suffers for Pierre. The innate charity of Jaffeir's character had appeared earlier; when Pierre had mentioned the “Cause,” Jaffeir had replied, “Curst be the Cause, though I thy friend be part on't: / Let me partake the troubles of thy bosom” (I, 222-23). As Pierre spurns Jaffeir's sympathy, Jaffeir offers himself as a martyr, exclaiming that Pierre may “heap wrongs on my poor head,” yet he will bear them until “wounded by my sufferings, thou relent, / And raise me to thy arms with dear forgiveness” (IV, 339-44). But Pierre, bound to the heroic code, refuses to accept sympathy and “excommunicates” Jaffeir from his friendship.

Jaffeir mistakenly attempts atonement by carrying out his pledge to sacrifice Belvidera, but again his charitable nature prevents him from accomplishing the deed, and he reaches the depths of self-abasement:

I am, I am a Coward; witness't Heaven,
Witness it, Earth, and every being Witness.

(IV, 520-21)

By the time of the final meeting with Belvidera he has resolved to commit suicide, and he no longer desires revenge; he admits that he still loves her and under the influence of his reawakened love he forgives her for her part in his degradation. He “blesses her unaware” so that they part reconciled, even though the scene is so painful to Belvidera that she is driven mad (V, 291-317). The reconciliation with Belvidera symbolizes Jaffeir's final acceptance of the hard terms life offers, and thus when Jaffeir provides an honorable death for Pierre by saving him from the rack, he has found the means to complete the redemptive process already well under way. He is able to expiate his sins by satisfying the demands of Pierre's code, thereby sacrificing his life for the needs of another. It is at this point that the heroic and the humble ways of life (to both of which Jaffeir owes allegiance) become reconciled.¹⁵

The roles of Belvidera and Pierre support this symbolic identification of Jaffeir with the sin and redemption motif. Throughout the play Belvidera is associated with angels, goodness, and faith. She first appears on the arms of two “virgins,” a pose reminiscent of innumerable Renaissance paintings of the wounded Christ supported by women or angels. Jaffeir states that “Angels are painted fair, to look like you” (I, 339), and he feels that poverty would be a veritable Eden with her (I, 382-95). She intuitively sees the conspiracy as a “hellish Trust” (III, ii, 107), and she has the power to frighten off evil in the form of Renault. At one point Jaffeir envisions her as a priestess leading him to holy sacrifice (IV, 87-94). More significantly, she serves to redeem Jaffeir temporarily each time she encounters him; especially vital is her role in convincing him to betray the plot, for she appeals to his “piety” as well as his love. She acts as the agent for Jaffeir's redemption by presenting the example of willing martyrdom which Jaffeir will follow on the scaffold. Jaffeir states:

The Seal of providence is sure upon thee.
And thou wert born for yet unheard of wonders:
Oh thou wert either born to save or damn me!

(IV, 524-26)

Ultimately Belvidera is destroyed because she takes upon herself the sins of her husband (V, 307-14), but she teaches Jaffeir how he, in turn, can assume the burdens of Pierre, and thereby complete his salvation.

Pierre fits coherently into this essentially religious pattern. Deluded himself as to the true reason for his actions, he is able to blind Jaffeir by the power of friendship. Early in the play Pierre intimates the unacknowledged truth, that his personal motives are stronger than his patriotism:

A Souldier's Mistress Jaffeir's his Religion,
When that's prophan'd, all other Tyes are broken.

(I, 199-200)

In the oath-taking scene Jaffeir, apprehensive of evil, says upon the entry of Pierre, “I but half wisht / To see the Devil, and he's here already” (II, 99-100). Indeed, Pierre's high-sounding phrases on the necessity of liberty closely echo the Miltonic Satan, just as the plotters discuss their rebellion in terms strongly reminiscent of Milton's counsel in Hell. There dwells a “God-like” nature in Pierre, but it is perverted in the interests of pride and personal heroism. At the execution, Pierre refuses the consolation of the priest, saying that he has lived a just, if godless, life, and that he holds no respect for “signs of Faith” (V, 388). But Pierre relents towards Jaffeir and forgives him, so that the final sacrificial act by Jaffeir consummates both their reunion in profound friendship and Jaffeir's restitution of honor. The priest at this point, thinking only in abstract theological terms, cries “Damnable Deed!” but Pierre says “Now thou hast indeed been faithful” (V, 467). Thus Jaffeir, who had earlier hoped for peace with Belvidera (III, ii, 24-25) and who had expressed his inner chaos by macrocosmic imagery (V, 219-27), is now able to say as his final utterance, “I'm quiet” (478).

But no simple triumph is possible on the human level in Otway's view of human nature. With Jaffeir's redemption comes the pitiable insanity and death of Belvidera, who had made Jaffeir's recovery possible. She is too weak, as any mortal would be, to bear both the burden of her husband's sins and her own emotional pressures. Thus the series of personal relationships between Jaffeir, Belvidera, and Pierre ends in grim irony: the Satanic Pierre is the means whereby Jaffeir's salvation is effected; the angelic Belvidera is crushed, not by evil, but by her own goodness; the vacillating Jaffeir eventually redeems himself and aids Pierre, but causes the death of the person he loves most, the one who released him from his “pact” with evil. Venice Preserv'd avoids the artificial resolution of heroic drama, and in so doing manifests profound tragedy.

Thus when a critic claims that Pierre's speeches about “my Proselyte” and the “mechanic” nature of prayer do not “fuse into any sort of coordinate relation with the play as a whole,”¹⁶ he neglects to examine the imagistic texture of the complete play. Whereas Otway's primary interest was undoubtedly “painting the passions,” he has accomplished this on a carefully laid symbolic foundation which serves to unify the more superficial plot structure. If the language of the play is ordered in the interests of emotion, that emotion is also ordered so that it expresses a realistic and complex view of human problems and behavior. Venice Preserv'd may not poetically be “next to Shakespeare,” but it is nevertheless sound tragedy.

Notes

1. Aline Mackenzie Taylor, Next to Shakespeare (Durham, N. C., 1950), pp. 39-72; and “Venice Preserv'd Reconsidered,” Tulane Studies in English, I (1949), 81-118, offer a thorough and interesting defense of the play, together with discussions of its background, form, and language. While I am indebted to her interpretations, I believe that she has not adequately answered the foremost specific objections to the play. I shall have occasion elsewhere in this paper to indicate my dissatisfaction with her arguments.

2. Wylie Sypher, Four Stages of Renaissance Style (Garden City, N. Y., 1955), p. 263.

3. Bonamy Dobrée, Restoration Tragedy (Oxford, 1929), pp. 145-47; Moody E. Prior, The Language of Tragedy (New York, 1947), p. 192.

4. “An Essay of Heroic Plays,” Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1900), I, 150.

5. See esp. Dryden's “Preface to Troilus and Cressida,” Essays, I, 220-28. Sypher (pp. 274-81) and Prior (p. 157) discuss the relevance of the passion psychology to heroic drama, as does the unpublished Johns Hopkins University doctoral dissertation of Ernest S. Gohn, “Seventeenth-century Theories of the Passions and the Plays of John Dryden” (Baltimore, 1948). Also pertinent is Brewster Rogerson, “The Art of Painting the Passions,” JHI, XIV (1953), 68-94.

6. René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, in the Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. and ed. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge, 1911), I, esp. 352-54.

7. See Cleopatra's speech in Dryden's All for Love, in the Dramatic Works, ed. Montague Summers (London, 1932), IV, 204; cf. the Spectator, No. 408 (June 18, 1712): “We may generally observe a pretty nice proportion between the strength of reason and passion; the greatest geniuses have commonly the strongest affections.”

8. In Dryden's Aureng-Zebe, for example, a typical heroic play, the characters are tagged by reference to their passions: Aureng-Zebe is “by no strong passion sway'd,” whereas the Emperor excuses his lapses from the code of honor by claiming that love “distemper'd” his mind (Dramatic Works, IV, 91, 97). The plot moves from one test of self-control to another. The Emperor's passions overcome his reason when he betrays his city and his son Aureng-Zebe so that he may possess Indamora, forgetting his duties as ruler and father. Aureng-Zebe cannot use force to regain Indamora because he would thus be violating his honor as son and subject, but he cannot honorably abandon her, nor does he wish to. Meanwhile, Indamora displays her self-control by resisting the illicit love of the Emperor and later by denying the personal safety to be secured in encouraging the advances of the lawless Morat. When Aureng-Zebe is confronted with his stepmother Nourmahal's love for him, he is placed in the position of either compromising his honor by participating in the immoral relationship or, it seems at the time, ignominiously dying. Only by restraining the passions throughout many temptations is Aureng-Zebe eventually able to triumph, becoming reunited with Indamora and either killing or converting his antagonists. Thus the play not only develops through a series of conflicts between love and honor (as Sypher, pp. 262-63, and Prior, pp. 158-61, have illustrated), but these conflicts are resolved only within the ethic of the passion psychology.

9. The Works of Thomas as Otway, ed. J. C. Ghosh (Oxford, 1932), II, 205, ll. 36-48. All further references will be to the line numbering in this edition.

10. Aureng-Zebe's first words are “My Vows have been successful as my Sword” (Dramatic Works, IV, 96), and this attitude prevails throughout the play.

11. For “characters” of these men see Plutarch's lives of Brutus and Cicero, Sallust's History of Cateline's Conspirarcy, esp. sect. 5, and Dio Cassus' Roman History, books xxxvi, xxxvii, xliv. See as well R. G. Ham, Otway and Lee: Biography from a Baroque Age (New Haven, 1931), pp. 195-98, for a discussion of the influence of Lee's Lucius Junius Brutus on Venice Preserv'd. Ham notes Otway's borrowings for the Belvidera-Jaffeir relationship and for the play's dénouement, but Otway may well have developed his conspirators with Lee's play in mind. Brutus was almost immediately banned, because the censor found in it “Scandalous Expressions & Reflections” upon the government and because its hero, a rebel, was portrayed too sympathetically. Otway was to make no such mistake.

12. Mrs. Taylor (Next to Shakespeare, p. 51) claims that Pierre and Jaffeir plot against the state “under the provocation of personal injury, but the state to them means Antonio and Priuli, and the satisfaction they seek is only that which is sanctioned by the gentleman's code.” I find this explanation of dramatic characters by reference to Cavalier mores unconvincing, especially when Otway has given us all we need within the play itself to understand the actions of his characters. Furthermore, following her premises, Mrs. Taylor is forced to conclude that Otway is unsuccessful in his depiction of Pierre, for “there still lingers more than a suggestion of political idealism.” But if we view Pierre as a man who confuses personal injury with universal injustice, it is not necessary to criticize Otway for what many readers have found to be his most successful character. While a drama is necessarily of its own time, it must transcend time if it is to be valid tragedy, and if my reading of the play is at all correct, Venice Preserv'd exists both within and without the 1680's.

13. The use of the Portia allusion is an interesting example of the neo-classical technique of imitation; that is, the addition of a dramatic value to a given context by juxtaposing a well-known situation from classical literature (or any other literature) with the present one, and allowing the parallels and contrasts to modify the surface statement. Here Belvidera is revealed as less heroic than Portia, who demonstrated her ability to receive confidences by wounding herself in the thigh before approaching her husband Brutus. Belvidera's “Roman constancy” is simply rhetorical; she claims fidelity but when put to the test cannot stand by her husband at the expense of her father. Later in the play she will exclaim, “Where's now the Roman Constancy I boasted?” (IV, 391). Thus once again Otway expresses the frailty of the human will, this time indirectly.

14. Dryden, Dramatic Works, IV, 127.

15. Mrs. Taylor states that in Otway's play the “heroic is disintegrating under the weight of the pathetic but the heroic convention is nonetheless a powerful influence; between it and the pathetic, though there may be a truce, there cannot be a peace” (Next to Shakespeare, p. 70). While there is much truth in this observation, I believe that Otway effects a reconciliation to this extent: Jaffeir fulfills the demands of the pathetic (or humble, as I have chosen to call it) by sacrificing his life for the needs of another, regardless of his valuation of those needs, yet he also makes partial restitution for his breach of heroic action in forswearing his oath to Pierre and the conspirators. Jaffeir thus becomes the point at which the pathetic and heroic merge, and although this resolution cannot avert the tragedy, it can place the action in a new perspective.

16. Prior, p. 188.