Venice Preserv'd
In 2019, the Royal Shakespeare Company staged a modern adaptation, Venice Preserved, at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.
[1] Jaffeir, a noble but impoverished Venetian, has secretly married Belvidera, the daughter of a proud senator named Priuli, who has cut off her inheritance.
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.
Jaffeir follows Belvidera's plan, but when the Senate gives the conspirators the choice between confession (and the possibility of pardon) and death, they choose to die rather than sacrifice their pride.
In remorse for betraying Pierre and losing his honor, Jaffeir threatens to kill Belvidera, unless she can obtain a pardon for the conspirators.
Just as Pierre is about to be hanged, Jaffeir rushes up to the gallows and stabs him; as a form of atonement, he then commits suicide.
[2] Otway's invitation to find a “such another man” has allowed several critics to connect Senator Antonio with Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who was a Whig politician.
“Belvidera is affectionate, constant, and pure” character who remains faithful to Jaffeir and gains pardon for the conspirators who were plotting to murder her father (1).
When Jaffeir tells Belvidera of the plot to destroy the senate, she recognises the corruption of the senate, but does not condone the plan of the conspirators (4): she says to Jaffeir, “Can thy great heart descend so vilely low, / Mix with hired slaves, bravoes, and common/ stabbers,… and take a ruffian's wages/ To cut the throats of wretches as they sleep?” (8).
Belvidera persuades Jaffeir to discontinue his association with the conspirators by telling him of Renault's assault towards her (III.
Belvidera calls upon the memories of her dead mother to convince her father to pardon the conspirators (Otway V. i.
Venice Preserv'd’s first performance was at the Duke's Theatre on 9 February 1682, with Elizabeth Barry as Belvidera.
Jaffeir is the tragic hero in Venice Preserv’d: he is expected to fulfill the roles of husband, friend, and activist.
For the opening showing of Venice Preserv’d on 9 February 1682 at the Duke's Theatre, William Smith played the character of Jaffeir.
When Pierre presents Jaffeir to the conspirators, he says, “I’ve brought my All into the publick Stock, / I had but one Friend, and him I’ll share amongst you!” (II.
Bywaters believes that Venice Preserv’d is an attack on the Whig party and that Pierre's speeches are the primary vehicle for those attacks: “and Pierre’s accusation of a ‘new Tyranny’... turns the Whigs’ rhetoric of tyranny and arbitrary power against them."
Venice Preserv’d was not seen in London for seven years until it returned in 1802; however, Pierre's part was censored and lacking its idealism.
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 (see, for example, Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel).
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).
Otway was the toast of London after Venice Preserv'd, and yet the financial situation of the theatre 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."
On 10 April 1865, John Wilkes Booth told Louis J. Weichmann that he was done with the stage and that the only play he wanted to present henceforth was Venice Preserv'd.
Although Weichmann did not understand the reference at the time, it was later assumed to be a veiled allusion to the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
