[In the following excerpt, originally published in 1928, Elwin offers a brief overview of Otway's life and plays, drawing attention to what he considers Otway's masterpiece, Venice Preserv'd.]

Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved has held the stage down to modern times and preserved his own name for the attention of every devotee to the slightest study of the drama. The sad story of his short life was known to every early Victorian society miss who sat through a presentation of his greatest play and, with fond fancy and the very utmost secrecy, tried to picture herself in the portrait of his Belvidera. Nevertheless, he has not been rendered exact justice, for he wrote two other tragedies of distinct brilliance and his excursions into comedy are not so completely contemptible as it is the fashion for critics to consider.

The bare outline of his life is too well known to describe at length, while precise particulars, if there are any procurable, have yet to be discovered. He was born in 1652, a year or two before Lee, and, like him, was the son of a country clergyman. Educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford, he went up to London in 1671, where he appeared at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre as the old king in Mrs. Behn's first play, The Forced Marriage. Being an utter failure as an actor, he frittered away time and money as a man about town till he took up writing plays and had Alcibiades produced at Dorset Garden in the autumn of 1675.

In this play, an heroic tragedy of the most melodramatic type, the ideas are good but the execution indifferent. For instance, the character of Tissaphernes, the great general laid aside by age and jealous of his youthful supplanter, is well conceived, and a tragedy of the type of Aeschylus' Agamemnon might have been designed on the diabolical desires of Deidamia. But the motives are all mixed and intermingled in a mystifying manner which prevents any interest in anything but the ultra-heroic love of Alcibiades and Timandra. Its production preceded that of Dryden's Aureng-Zebe only by a few weeks, and any comparison between the two utterly damns Otway's effort.

Don Carlos succeeded Alcibiades in less than a year, but it is impossible to believe that the author wrote either play immediately prior to its production. The quality of his second play too far transcends the mediocrity of his first to make such a supposition commonly credible. It is possible that the youth, who appeared in London in 1671, had occupied his leisure with scribbling and had dilatorily designed the earlier tragedy. Anyhow, it is wildly improbable that his poetic talent and dramatic craftsmanship could have improved so marvellously in a few months.

For Don Carlos is one of the finest of all heroic tragedies, certainly one of the three finest written in rhyme. No other writer since Shakespeare, except Lee, could have created the awful atmosphere at the beginning of the fifth act when the Duchess of Eboli enters to the presence of the pondering king, and few plots in history could equal the splendour of Don John's soliloquy in the opening of the second act. The unity is marvellously managed in comparison with the digressing dramas of the later Elizabethans. The action centres upon the theme of jealousy, the king, having married a young woman as good as formally affianced to his son, becoming senilely suspicious of their virtue and honour. The seeds of suspicion are sown and tended in their growth by the ambitious arch-villain, Rui-Gomez, and the scenes portraying this circumstance are acutely and admirably contrived.

Nevertheless, the plot has a fault. The Eboli underplot is incoherent and too distantly divorced from the principal action. In this passionate, abandoned woman, without scruple or moral, one feels that Otway has squandered a subject of singular possibilities. Her intrigue with Don John is only indirectly illustrative of her moral attitude and has no momentous bearing upon the issue. Nor is Don John any more than a negative influence.

Passion and pathos are the pre-eminent weapons in the ‘tender Otway's’ armoury. The love of Carlos and the queen and its disastrous consequences have the power to move inexpressibly; they never sink to sickliness like the sentiment of Dryden. There is none of the bombast of Settle or the violence of Lee, only a modicum of rant and no extraneous exaggeration. Moreover, apart from the Don John episodes, the action moves on its course smoothly and steadily towards the inevitable estuary, like a broad and brimming river, yet there are no more piffling eddies and pottering backwaters than in the madly rushing mountain torrent of Lee.

Don Carlos was a popular play, like Lee's great tragedies. The actor, Barton Booth, records that Betterton ‘observed to me many years ago, that Don Carlos succeeded much better than either Venice Preserved, or The Orphan, and was infinitely more applauded and followed for many years.’ It is reputed to have been played for thirty successive nights, but, as Dr. Johnson remarks in his life of Otway, this ‘it is reasonable to doubt, as so long a continuance of one play upon the stage is a very wide deviation from the practice of the time; when the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not yet diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety.’ Nevertheless, it is easy to imagine that the female section of the limited theatrical public which sighed and lamented over Lee's Theodosius and Mithridates and wept for Monimia in The Orphan, would revel in a miasma of melancholy arising from the ill-fated loves of Carlos and the queen.

The classic cult had led Crowne to the adaptation of Andromaque in 1675 and Lee was already blending classicism with the broader romantic style when Otway became attracted by Racine, and six months after the production of Don Carlos, staged his translation of Bérénice as Titus and Berenice. Though its tone is heroic and sentimental, treating entirely of the tragic separation of the beautiful Berenice and the typically Roman Titus, this play's academic frigidity and lack of action cannot have commended it to the audience of 1676, which was in raptures over Don Carlos and Lee's Gloriana and affording approval to the rollicking comedies of Crowne, D'Urfey, and Ravenscroft. Otway is unlikely to have anticipated any astounding success for his translation, for he took the precaution of compressing the original into three acts and suffixing The Cheats of Scapin, a neat adaptation from Molière.

This farce is one of the earliest of its kind, yet betrays a similar spirit to that which has filled the Aldwych Theatre in the past five or six years. The gist of the whole thing belongs to Molière, but Otway achieved a very capable and competent translation. The clandestine marriages of two young sparks, each to the other's sister and neither knowing the identity of his wife, and the fear of disinheritance at the hands of their irate fathers, both wealthy misers, provide ample scope for the cheats and conceits of the ingenious and impudent Scapin, who champions the cause of the young men. The dialogue is smart and sharp, the action fast and full of incident, and there is no question that the piece, an apparent triviality in itself, established a vogue which has existed to our own day. Ravenscroft and D'Urfey both profited by its example, The Anatomist of the former, in a mutilated form, surviving far into the succeeding century.

Otway's next production was the comedy called Friendship in Fashion, which was a firm favourite in the author's lifetime, but on its revival in 1749, according to Dr. Johnson, was ‘hissed off the stage for immorality and obscenity.’ Like Limberham, which appeared about the same time and went out immediately like a wet squib, it is a savage social satire in the manner of Wycherley. In spite of its success and the failure of Dryden's comedy, the latter is superior in dramatic construction. The peripeties of Otway's comedy are altogether too complicated and there is so great a diffusion of interest that one has to return to Massinger and Shirley to find parallel complexity.

The least said of its morality the better; it is an iniquitous paradise for persons of Jeremy Collier's calibre. As fanciful satire, however, it is not unworthy work, and, by virtue of its very viciousness, escapes the didactic note which offended in Limberham. Otway obtains the sympathy of his audience for Mrs. Goodvile, Truman, and Valentine, though all of them are arrant libertines, by contrasting the low-minded lewdness of the dishonourable Goodvile with their genuine gentility. In Mrs. Goodvile, indeed, there is a certain charm and no audience can withhold from her its sympathy and satisfaction. Malagene is a clever comic creation, from which Congreve may have derived a hint for his Tattle in Love for Love, as he may for Brisk in The Double Dealer from Caper and Saunter. Otway, in his turn, got his character from Wycherley's Sparkish while he also owes something to Shadwell. Lady Squeamish has some resemblance to Lady Vaine in The Sullen Lovers, but what he borrowed, Otway returned in Sir Noble Clumsey, who provides plenty of amusing low comedy, Shadwell making some use of his humour in Bury Fair. There are some pretty patches of dialogue and a heap of acid gibes, but the play cannot be called a moral satire, though a satire on morals, or rather the absence of them.

About this time, Otway obtained a military commission through the influence of Charles Fitz-Charles, Earl of Plymouth, a natural son of the King by Catherine Pegg, who died at Tangiers in 1680 at the early age of twenty-three. He went to Flanders and stayed there long enough to write the greater part of Caius Marius, which was produced in the autumn of 1679. The plot of this play, usually unjustly dismissed as one of the dramatist's unfortunate backslidings, is derived from historical sources found in Lucan and Plutarch with a plagiarism of Romeo and Juliet interwoven. The arrant pilfering of Shakespeare's plot has deluded critics into contemptuous condemnation—some parts being bodily borrowed in their original form with no other alteration than is displayed in the line ‘O Marius, Marius! wherefore art thou Marius?’—but there is plenty of power in the piece and some skilled craftsmanship, as displayed in the creation of Sulpitius, who fills the rôle of a vulgarized Menenius Agrippa. …

The Orphan and The Soldier's Fortune appeared within a few weeks of each other in 1680. The latter is a farcical comedy of manners and intrigue, neither more nor less salacious in tone than Friendship in Fashion, but the construction is more skilful and uniform. The characters are, however, only sketchy in outline and the play has no right to rank higher than contemporary work by Ravenscroft and Mrs. Behn. The plot has none of the complexity of Friendship in Fashion. It centres round the love of the soldier, Beaugard, for an old sweetheart, Lady Dunce, now married to a senile husband, with the humours of a lewd old pander, Sir Jolly Jumble. The underplot, dealing with the legitimate amour of Courtine and Sylvia, is purely incidental. One can well imagine that such a comedy would well please the audience of the author's lifetime, and its success suggested a sequel, The Atheist, the author's last production, which appeared in 1683, but is inferior to either of his other comedies.

After Venice Preserved, The Orphan is usually considered the best of Otway's work, and it kept the stage for a hundred and thirty-five years, being last performed professionally in the year of Waterloo. As certain characteristics of Lee recall the shade of Marlowe, so Otway in this play appears reminiscent of Ford. Hysterical emotion and hyperbolic sentiment pervade the atmosphere of the piece. The character of Castalio, a part in which Betterton must have been incomparable, is largely based on such a twin foundation. The motive of the tragedy arises from his character, since, with assumed cynicism, he disavows any honourable intentions towards Monimia and thus leads his brother, Polydore, to believe that the girl is fair game and he can use the customary licence of the gallant in his attentions to her.

The conduct of the play is strictly classical, the interest of the audience never being diverted from the single theme. Sentiment everywhere surrounds Monimia, the orphan left in Acasto's care by her gallant father, and in her soft, sweet womanhood Otway paid the tribute of a poet's idealism to the tyranny of Mrs. Barry. The anguish of Castalio must have afflicted himself in circumstances so similar, though his opinion of Rochester can scarcely have coincided with the conception of Polydore, a frank, forceful young fellow, who exacts as much sympathy from the onlookers as the softer, more sensitive, but less direct Castalio. As early as Sophonisba in 1675, Lee had dispensed with the diabolic villain of Drydenesque drama and the dénouement of The Orphan is developed without the agency of this essential of melodrama. The dramatis personæ are only eleven in number, seven men, three women, and a child, and the cost of costume and scenery cannot attain a momentous figure without lavish extravagance.

The lack of atmosphere in Otway, which may have led Dryden to scoff at him as ‘a barren illiterate man,’ is as remarkable as its presence is overwhelming in Lee. In the latter, we smell the camp and hear the footfalls of Roman citizens making their way over cobbled roads to the Capitol, but in Otway the scene might be Madrid or Macedon, the persons seventeenth-century society sparks or Spartans of the age of Alcibiades. This fault, however, serves to accentuate his insight into human nature and emotions together with his faculty for faithfully depicting them.

Venice Preserved is his masterpiece. It is, indeed, one of the world's masterpieces of tragic drama and, after one of two of Shakespeare's principal plays, has proved the most popular of classical acting pieces. It was produced early in 1682 at Dorset Garden, with Mrs. Barry as Belvidera, Betterton as Jaffier, and Smith as Pierre. It has been translated into French, Dutch, Russian, Italian and German. On the London stage it has been regularly revived, Verbruggen and Wilks succeeding the creators of the chief male parts, Garrick and Spranger Barry each played both Jaffier and Pierre at different times, as did J. P. Kemble, while Charles Kemble acted Jaffier many times, and G. F. Cooke was a famous Pierre. Edmund Kean, Elliston, Macready, and Phelps are other famous actors associated with the piece, while the successors of Mrs. Barry as Belvidera include Mrs. Spranger Barry, Mrs. Siddons, Eliza O'Neill, Fanny Kemble, Helen Faucit, and the late Geneviève Ward. Its most recent appearance on the stage was under the auspices of the Phoenix Society a few years ago.

Founded on a novel of Saint-Réal, the play might have been written by Shakespeare, except that it exhibits a closer adherence to unity than most of the master's work. Otway's object is a scathing satire on human nature and he never wavers from his course to that end. The web is spun about the person of Jaffier, who, in spite of certain ranting speeches such as his greeting of the conspirators in the second act, is scarcely the conventional heroical hero. He is not merely the creature of circumstance, kicked and cuffed by cruel fortune, but an innocent idealist, turned out into the world ill-equipped to bear the buffets of crude humanity. Like Charles the First, he was a great gentleman who, in less turbulent surroundings, would have rested content to remain a good father, a tender husband, and a staunch friend. He enjoys the perfect love of a woman, but has its sweetness soured by the severity of a selfish father-in-law. Educated to wealth and the luxuries incumbent upon wealth, he discovers at his door the wolf of poverty, and, prompted by anger against his old hunks of a father-in-law and affection for his friend, Pierre, allows himself to be introduced to the conspirators who plot the downfall of the government. These men are the motley crew one finds in all clandestine political plots but all are apparently men of honour, inbred with honesty and integrity of purpose. Yet here again disillusion waits on Jaffier, for old Renault, the ‘grave guide of counsels,’ seizes the first available opportunity to attempt the violation of Belvidera's beauty.

A master touch, after Shakespeare's fashion, appears in the ultimate ‘unkindest cut of all.’ Inspired by the patriotism of Belvidera, Jaffier reveals the secrets of the conspiracy and the identities of the conspirators to the senate, having previously exacted an oath from the duke and his council that all shall be pardoned. The audience is as well aware as the author that the duke and his satellites have not the slightest intention to abide by their vows, but Jaffier is not. His faith in human honesty receives its last overwhelming shock before his honourable death by his own hand on the scaffold beside the corpse of his friend.

There are only two digressions from the main theme. One is the character of Renault, who at first appears to have been introduced solely to supply comic relief to the somewhat melodramatic intensity of the conspirators' scene in the second act. His attempt upon Belvidera's virtue, which takes place, as in Greek tragedy, off the stage, has a direct effect upon the psychological argument, as it provides another proof of human vice to the unfortunate Jaffier. The other, centring upon Antonio and Aquilina, can scarcely be described as an underplot. Episodic to the Jaffier connection it certainly is, but the shafts of its satire are aimed in the same direction. Antonio, ‘a haggard owl, a worthless kite of prey,’ was a cruel, possibly a rather crude, caricature of Shaftesbury, portrayed as a lecherous scab of senility, delighting in debasing himself at the whim of a paid prostitute. The scenes in which he appears were omitted by Kemble, but it is a matter of debate whether this practice is advantageous. They harmonize with the satirical spirit of the whole, and, if left out, the tragedy must be singularly short of comic relief, though it cannot be denied that the scene where Antonio is kicked by him mistress is merely a low piece of pantomime.

Everywhere there is evident an almost Galsworthian craving for justice. As early as the opening scene, Pierre declares himself a villain for suffering himself to see ‘our senators cheat the deluded people with a show of liberty, which yet they ne'er must taste of.’ His and Jaffier's discussion of honesty (Act I, Sc. i), which may be termed the text of Otway's sermon, might be compared with Falstaff's droll homily on honour, were it not that the tone is here one of bleak and bitter cynicism. Pierre's character is drawn in a masterly manner, that of a man of the world, coldly cynical, without a fragment of faith in the honesty of mankind, yet fully aware of its weaknesses, on his guard even against his mistress and his dearest friend, a man who is all intellect, whose heart has become absorbed by his brain. His eloquence in defence of Jaffier, when the latter is suspected of treachery by the other conspirators (Act III, Sc. ii), is reminiscent of Mark Antony's, everywhere exhibiting his acute appreciation of human instinct.

The character of Belvidera is generally accepted as a dramatic masterpiece. She is a live woman, not a mere stage heroine. Her love passages with her husband are very fine, though it is not fair to agree with the regularly reiterated dictum that these comprise the salient merits of the play. It is impossible to pick out isolated passages from Venice Preserved which are fairly representative of the poetic or dramatic values of the play. It is easy to do so in the case of many of the Elizabethans, as Lamb proved with his specimens, but so much of their work is patchy and therefore patent to such a process. There are striking speeches here and there which may be picked out as tit-bits for quotation, such as the already mentioned remarks on honesty, Jaffier's apostrophe at the close of the opening scene, his short soliloquy while awaiting the arrival of Pierre in the Rialto, and so on, but the play must be considered in its entirety for a true appreciation of its artistic excellence. It is in such pithy utterances as the expostulations of Pierre when Jaffier shows signs of reluctance that the marvellous skill of the dramatist is represented. What awful cynicism is in the rhetorical

‘Is the world Reformed since our last meeting? What new miracles Have happened? Has Priuli's heart relented?

Can he be honest?’

Venice Preserved is a fine acting play because the action never flags. The infrequency of soliloquies and asides is a notable feature. The iron is ever glowing with white heat, there are no moments of idle reflection and isolated ruminations, no pauses for artificial effect. It has not the tumultuous energy and teeming variety of Lucius Junius Brutus, but it possesses a power, which, if less strident than that in Lee, maintains a grip never for a second relaxing. Otway's muse is like a broad, swift, and smoothly flowing river; Lee's is a mountain torrent, rushing madly to its stormy estuary.

The popular story of Otway's early death is probably the product of enthusiastic journalism. He is said to have been in a state of starvation, to have been presented with a guinea by a good Samaritan, to have bought a loaf of bread with it, choked himself with a chunk of that apparently expensive comestible, and died as a result. However that may be, his life certainly ended on April 14, 1685, at the Bull tavern on Tower Hill. Lee went to Bedlam about this time and James Stuart ascended the English throne, so altogether it was not a very fortunate epoch.

Some eighteen months later, Smith and Betterton advertised in L'Estrange's Observator for an uncompleted play by Otway, of which the dramatist had written four acts. Apparently this has never been discovered, though, in 1719, there was published a piece entitled Heroic Friendship, purporting to be the missing work. This has been described as a ‘paltry and stupid performance’ and is generally considered a negligible forgery. It is a fact to be deplored that both Lee and Otway died before they had reached the prime of life, for their influence on the drama was enormous, and they might have done much for serious drama in the succeeding century. On the other hand, death possibly prevented their degeneration into operatic librettists, both being essentially professional playwrights and insufficiently endowed with ducats to be able to withstand the voracious and frequently vicious appetite of the theatrical public.