by Thomas Otway
Sir Dav. No more to be said; it shall be done, sweetheart: but don’t be too hard upon me; use me gently, as thou didst my wife; gently, ha, ha, ha! a very good jest, i’ faith, ha, ha, ha! or if he should be cruel to me, gentlemen, and take this advantage over a poor cornuto, to lay me in a prison, or throw me in a dungeon, at least —
I hope amongst all you, sirs, I shan’t fail
To find one brother-cuckold out for bail. [Exeunt.
EPILOGUE
With the discharge of passions much oppressed,
Disturbed in brain, and pensive in his breast,
Full of those thoughts which make the unhappy sad,
And by imagination half grown mad,
The poet led abroad his mourning muse,
And let her range, to see what sport she’d choose.
Straight, like a bird got loose, and on the wing,
Pleased with her freedom she began to sing;
Each note was echoed all the vale along,
And this was what she uttered in her song: —
Wretch, write no more for an uncertain fame,
Nor call thy muse, when thou art dull, to blame:
Consider with thyself how thou’rt unfit
To make that monster of mankind, a wit:
A wit’s a toad, who, swelled with silly pride,
Full of himself, scorns all the world beside;
Civil would seem, though he good manners lacks,
Smiles on all faces, rails behind all backs.
If e’er good-natured, nought to ridicule,
Good-nature melts a wit into a fool:
Placed high like some jack-pudding in a hall,
At Christmas revels, he makes sport for all.
So much in little praises he delights,
But when he’s angry, draws his pen, and writes.
A wit to no man will his dues allow;
Wits will not part with a good word that’s due:
So whoe’er ventures on the ragged coast
Of starving poets, certainly is lost;
They rail like porters at the penny-post.
At a new author’s play see one but sit,
Making his snarling froward face of wit,
The merit he allows, and praise he grants,
Comes like a tax from a poor wretch that wants.
O poets, have a care of one another,
There’s hardly one amongst ye true to t’other:
Like Trinculos and Stephanos, ye play
The lewdest tricks each other to betray.
Like foes detract, yet flattering, friend-like smile,
And all is one another to beguile
Of praise, the monster of your barren isle.
Enjoy the prostitute ye so admire,
Enjoy her to the full of your desire;
Whilst this poor scribbler wishes to retire,
Where he may ne’er repeat his follies more,
But curse the fate that wrecked him on your shore.
Now you, who this day as his judges sit,
After you’ve heard what he has said of wit,
Ought for your own sakes not to be severe,
But show so much to think he meant none here.
Venice Preserved
OR, A PLOT DISCOVERED
Widely regarded as Otway’s masterpiece, Venice Preserved; Or, A Plot Discovered is the most significant tragedy of the 1680’s English stage. It was first performed in 1682, with Thomas Betterton taking the role of Jaffeir and Elizabeth Barry, Otway’s beloved muse, appearing as Belvidera. The play was quickly printed and enjoyed many revivals up until the 1830’s.
The plot concerns Jaffeir, a noble but impoverished Venetian, who has secretly married Belvidera, the daughter of the proud senator Priuli, who has cut off her inheritance. Jaffeir is accompanied by his friend Pierre, a foreign soldier, who stokes his resentment and entices him into a plot against the Senate of Venice. Pierre’s reasons for plotting against the Senate revolve around the corrupt senator Antonio, who has paid for relations with Pierre’s mistress, Aquilina. Despite Pierre’s complaints, the Senate has refused to punish Antonio, who enjoys a senatorial privilege.
Pierre introduces Jaffeir to the conspirators, captained by the vicious Renault. To earn their trust, Jaffeir must put Belvidera in Renault’s care as a hostage. That evening, Renault attempts to rape Belvidera, but she escapes to Jaffeir, who then confides to her the plot against the Senate. She devises a plan of her own: Jaffeir will reveal the conspiracy to the Senate and claim the lives of the conspirators as his reward. But will this new plot succeed?
The play features several political parallels. The character of Senator Antonio is a reference to Shaftesbury, while the grand plot resembles the Gunpowder Plot, among others, as well as the so-called “Spanish Conspiracy” against Venice of 1618. 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 Exclusion Crisis. These factors were no doubt responsible for the play’s initial success. Modern critics have also identified how Venice Preserv’d tackles feminist issues. As the play was written in the Restoration period, when the legal protections for women were few and far between, the emotional impact of the tragedy is in many ways the vulnerability of women. Aquillina, the play’s courtesan, is treated with little regard by the men. Her lover, Pierre, refuses to reveal the plot against the Senate to her, suggesting that women shouldn’t talk ‘out of bed’, and Antonio never calls her by her name, but refers to her only as his “little Nacky” (a slang term for a woman’s genitalia). Of all of the characters, Belvidera is the most powerless in the face of overwhelming social and political turmoil. Contemporary audiences responded enthusiastically to the pathos of her character, which was especially written for Elizabeth Barry, capitalising on her phenomenal success in the role of the similarly helpless Monimia in Otway’s The Orphan (1680).
Following the resounding success of Venice Preserv’d, Otway was the toast of London. However, the financial situation of the theatre meant that he did not grow wealthy from his work. In 1692, Robert Gould, a significant voice of Restoration poetry, wrote, “Otway, though very fat, starves.” Though today the reputation of Venice Preserv’d has become more obscure, it held the status of one of the best-known and most important of English tragedies for over 100 years.
The first edition’s title page
CONTENTS
VENICE PRESERVED; OR, A PLOT DISCOVERED.
TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH.
PROLOGUE.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
ACT THE FIRST.
ACT THE SECOND.
ACT THE THIRD.
ACT THE FOURTH.
ACT THE FIFTH.
EPILOGUE
VENICE PRESERVED; OR, A PLOT DISCOVERED.
Venice Preserved was written and acted in 1682, when the terrors of the alleged Popish Plot had nearly subsided, and probably receives its second title from that atrocious and equivocal scare. It is founded on the historical novel of Saint-Réal, Conjuration des Espagnols contre la Venise en 1618, though Sir Henry Wotton, who was our ambassador to Venice at the time, calls it a French conspiracy. The whole thing was kept as dark as possible by the Republic, and its exact character is not easy to determine. Mr. Horatio Brown, however, by original researches in the Venetian archives, has thrown much light upon it in his recent charming volume of Venetian Sketches. Needy French adventurers, like Pierre and Renault, appear to have inflamed the ambition of Spanish grandees, like Osorio, Viceroy of Naples, and Bedamar, the ambassador at Venice, to compass the ruin of the Republic by taking advantage of gross internal corruption, the glaring contrast between social luxury and poverty, and consequent political discontent. But it was a rat-like hole-and-corner plot, as devoid of civic virtue or dignity, as any Rye House plot of Otway’s time, or any American-Irish assassination club of our own.
The last time the play was performed without the omission of the comic scenes,
in which Antonio so degradingly figures, was at the special command of George II.; but they were condemned by the audience in spite of royal influence. The satire upon Shaftesbury, designed in the character of Antonio, is said to have been introduced at the instigation of Charles II. (Derrick, Dramatic Censor, ). In the prologue to the play, Shaftesbury’s ambition to be elected King of Poland, which procured for him the nick-name of “Count Tapsky,” and was ridiculed by Dryden in The Medal, is openly referred to. Antonio’s name and age also correspond to those of Shaftesbury. But the parody of his style of speaking is poor. The audience on the occasion just referred to bestowed vehement applause on Leigh and Mrs. Currer, who acted the parts of Antonio and Aquilina. So fond were people of buffoonery in those days that, according to Davies (Dramatic Miscellany), when Pierre, defying the conspirators (Act III.), exclaims— “Thou die! Thou kill my friend! or thou, or thou, or thou with that lean, withered, wretched face!” — an actor, selected for the purpose, of a most unfortunate figure and meagre visage, presented himself, and converted this fine passage into burlesque.
The play of Venice Preserved has been several times translated into French. Hallam observes that the Manlius Capitolinus of Antoine de la Fosse, published in 1698, and imitated from Venice Preserved, shows the influence which Otway exercised abroad. Upon himself the influence of contemporary French dramatists was in turn very marked. Lord Byron was certainly indebted to this play in his Marino Faliero. An old French critic finds fault with the tolling of the bell in Act V. “This shocking extravagance, which in Paris would excite only contempt and derision, strikes the English with awe.” How fashions change! Think of Victor Hugo and Lucrezia Borgia!
Hallam remarked that Venice Preserved had been more frequently seen on the stage than any other play, except those of Shakespeare. He relates that when he saw it he was affected almost to agony. According to Mr. Archer (Reign of Victoria. Drama), Venice Preserved was performed under Macready at Covent Garden between 1837 and 1839. It was revived at Sadler’s Wells in 1845, with Phelps as Jaffier, and Mrs. Warner as Belvidera.
TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH.
Madam,
Were it possible for me to let the world know how entirely your Grace’s goodness has devoted a poor man to your service; were there words enough in speech to express the mighty sense I have of your great bounty towards me, surely I should write and talk of it for ever: but your Grace has given me so large a theme, and laid so very vast a foundation, that imagination wants stock to build upon it. I am as one dumb when I would speak of it; and when I strive to write, I want a scale of thought sufficient to comprehend the height of it.
Forgive me, then, madam, if (as a poor peasant once made a present of an apple to an emperor) I bring this small tribute, the humble growth of my little garden, and lay it at your feet. Believe it is paid you with the utmost gratitude; believe that so long as I have thought to remember how very much I owe your generous nature, I will ever have a heart that shall be grateful for it too: your Grace, next Heaven, deserves it amply from me; that gave me life, but on a hard condition — till your extended favour taught me to prize the gift, and took the heavy burthen it was clogged with from me; I mean hard fortune. When I had enemies, that with malicious power kept back and shaded me from those royal beams whose warmth is all I have, or hope to live by, your noble pity and compassion found me, where I was far cast backward from my blessing, down in the rear of fortune; called me up, placed me in the shine, and I have felt its comfort. You have in that restored me to my native right; for a steady faith, and loyalty to my prince, was all the inheritance my father left me: and however hardly my ill fortune deal with me, ’tis what I prize so well that I ne’er pawned it yet, and hope I ne’er shall part with it.
Nature and fortune were certainly in league when you were born; and as the first took care to give you beauty enough to enslave the hearts of all the world, so the other resolved, to do its merit justice, that none but a monarch, fit to rule that world, should e’er possess it; and in it he had an empire. The young prince you have given him, by his blooming virtues, early declares the mighty stock he came from; and as you have taken all the pious care of a dear mother and a prudent guardian to give him a noble and generous education, may it succeed according to his merits and your wishes: may he grow up to be a bulwark to his illustrious father, and a patron to his loyal subjects; with wisdom and learning to assist him, whenever called to his councils; to defend his right against the encroachments of republicans in his senates; to cherish such men as shall be able to vindicate the royal cause; that good and fit servants to the crown may never be lost for want of a protector. May he have courage and conduct, fit to fight his battles abroad, and terrify his rebels at home; and that all these may be yet more sure, may he never, during the spring-time of his years, when those growing virtues ought with care to be cherished, in order to their ripening; — may he never meet with vicious natures, or the tongues of faithless, sordid, insipid flatterers, to blast them. To conclude, may he be as great as the hand of fortune (with his honour) shall be able to make him; and may your Grace, who are so good a mistress, and so noble a patroness, never meet with a less grateful servant than,
Madam,
Your Grace’s entirely
devoted Creature,
THOMAS OTWAY.
PROLOGUE.
In these distracted times, when each man dreads
The bloody stratagems of busy heads;
When we have feared, three years, we know not what,
Till witnesses begin to die o’ the rot,
What made our poet meddle with a plot?
Was’t that he fancied, for the very sake
And name of plot, his trifling play might take?
For there’s not in’t one inch-board evidence,
But ’tis, he says, to reason plain, and sense,
And that he thinks a plausible defence.
Were truth by sense and reason to be tried,
Sure all our swearers might be laid aside:
No, of such tools our author has no need,
To make his plot, or make his play succeed;
He of black bills has no prodigious tales,
Or Spanish pilgrims cast ashore in Wales;
Here’s not one murdered magistrate at least,
Kept rank, like venison for a city feast;
Grown four days stiff, the better to prepare
And fit his pliant limbs to ride in chair:
Yet here’s an army raised, though under ground,
But no man seen, nor one commission found;
Here is a traitor too that’s very old,
Turbulent, subtle, mischievous, and bold;
Bloody, revengeful, and, to crown his part,
Loves fumbling with a wench with all his heart;
Till after having many changes past,
In spite of age (thanks Heaven) is hanged at last.
Next is a senator that keeps a whore,
In Venice none a higher office bore;
To lewdness every night the lecher ran:
Show me, all London, such another man,
Match him at Mother Creswold’s if you can.
O Poland, Poland! had it been thy lot,
T’have heard in time of this Venetian plot,
Thou surely chosen hadst one king from thence,
And honoured them, as thou hast England since.
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
Duke of Venice.
Priuli, Father of Belvidera, a Senator.
Antonio, a fine speaker in the Senate.
Bedamar, the Spanish Ambassador.
Conspirators:
Jaffier,
Pierre,
Renault,
Spinosa,
Theodore,
Eliot,
Revillido,
Durand,
Mezzana,
Brainville,
Ternon,
Retrosi,
Brabe,
Belvid
era.
Aquilina, a Greek Courtesan.
Two Women, Attendants on Belvidera.
Two Women, Servants to Aquilina.
The Council of Ten.
Officer, Guard, Friar, Executioner, and Rabble.
SCENE — Venice.
ACT THE FIRST.
SCENE I. — A Public Place.
Enter Priuli and Jaffier.
Priu. No more! I’ll hear no more; begone and leave me.
Jaff. Not hear me! by my suffering but you shall!
My lord, my lord! I’m not that abject wretch
You think me: patience! where’s the distance throws
Me back so far, but I may boldly speak
In right, though proud oppression will not hear me?
Priu. Have you not wronged me?
Jaff. Could my nature e’er
Have brooked injustice, or the doing wrongs,
I need not now thus low have bent myself,
To gain a hearing from a cruel father!
Wronged you?
Priu. Yes, wronged me: in the nicest point,
The honour of my house, you’ve done me wrong.
You may remember, — for I now will speak,
And urge its baseness, — when you first came home
From travel, with such hopes as made you looked on
By all men’s eyes, a youth of expectation,
Pleased with your growing virtue, I received you,
Courted, and sought to raise you to your merits:
My house, my table, nay, my fortune too,
My very self was yours; you might have used me
To your best service; like an open friend,
I treated, trusted you, and thought you mine;
When, in requital of my best endeavours,
You treacherously practised to undo me;
Seduced the weakness of my age’s darling,
My only child, and stole her from my bosom —
O Belvidera!
Jaff. ’Tis to me you owe her;
Childless you had been else, and in the grave
