Venice Preserv'd
Venice Preserv'd (in full: "Venice Preserv'd or, a Plot discover'd"), German "The saved Venice", is a play from the time of the Stuart Restoration , written by the English playwright Thomas Otway . It was the most significant tragedy on the English stage in the 1680s . It premiered on February 9, 1682 at the Dorset Garden Theater , starring Thomas Betterton (Jaffeir) and Elizabeth Barry (Belvidera). The play was also published as a book and saw many new productions until the 1830s. In 1904 Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote "The Saved Venice" based on the literary model Otways . The drama premiered in Berlin in 1905.
action
Jaffeir, a noble but impoverished Venetian, has secretly married Belvidera, the daughter of a proud senator named Priuli, who then disinherited her. Jaffeir's friend Pierre, a foreign soldier, stirs up Jaffeir's anger and encourages him to conspire against the Venice Senate. Pierres, however, has reasons of his own for the conspiracy. He targets another senator, the corrupt, foolish Antonio. He lets Pierre's lover Aquilina come to him for money. Despite Pierre's complaints, the Senate takes no action, declaring that Antonio has senatorial privileges.
Pierre introduces Jaffeir to the other conspirators, led by the extremely violent Renault. To win the conspirators' trust, Jaffeir has to hand Belvidera hostage into the care of Renault. That night, however, Renault tries to rape Belvidera, but she is able to flee to Jaffeir in time. Jaffeir then tells his wife about the conspiracy against the Senate. Belvidera is now drafting its own plan: Jaffeir will reveal the conspiracy to the Senate and demand the life of the conspirators as a reward. However, Jaffeir decided to spare some or all of the conspirators, above all his friend Pierre. Jaffeir otherwise follows Belvidera's plan, but the Senate breaks his word and sentenced all conspirators to death. Deeply ashamed of having cheated on Pierre and lost his honor, Jaffeir threatens to kill Belvidera unless she can obtain a pardon for the conspirators. She follows orders, but the granted pardon comes too late. Jaffeir visits Pierre before his execution and sees Pierre dejected because he is sentenced to a dishonorable hanging, not the death of a soldier. Pierre forgives Jaffeir and Jaffeir whispers (not heard by the audience) to kill him honorably before he is executed. When Pierre is about to be hanged, Jaffeir rushes to the gallows and stabs him; as a form of atonement and redemption in Christianity. He then stabs himself. Belvidera goes mad and dies.
main characters
Antonio
Antonio is a corrupt senator who has a sexual relationship with the courtesan Aquilina: In the prologue of the play Otway describes Antonio as a senator who holds one of the highest offices in Venice and who is a whore. The fornicator is urged to lascivious every night and at the end of the prologue Otway asks the London audience to name a similar person. (In the literary original: "a Senator that keeps a whore / In Venice none of a higher office bore. / To lewdness every night the lecher ran; / Show me, all London, such another man, /".) Otway's request for a " Finding such other people ”encouraged some discontented people here to identify Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury , a Whigs politician .
Antonio's key scene in Venice Preserv'd is a silly kitsch scene ("Nicky Nacky") in which Antonio tries a kind of foreplay with Aquilina by imitating a bull, a toad and a dog. According to literary scholar Professor Derek H. Hughes ( Rice University ), Antonio's relationship with Aquilina mirrors other relationships in the play by introducing prostitution, submission, and self-humility, something that is also subtle in the relationships between Renault and Belvidera, Jaffeir and Pierre, and Jaffeir and Belvidera shows.
Aquilina
Aquilina is a courtesan who has a romantic love for Pierre but also a sexual relationship with Senator Antonio. Aquilina allows Pierre to secretly meet his co-conspirators in their apartment (2nd act II.i.48.) Aquilina appears three times in the play: in the second, third and fifth act. The actress Edith Evans played the role of Lyric Theater in 1920, which was highly acclaimed the Aquilina. In 1984 Stephanie Beacham took on this role at the Royal National Theater .
Belvidera
Belvidera is a noblewoman and the daughter of Priuli, as well as Jaffeir's wife. Belvidera is a "benevolent, steadfast, and pure" character who is loyal to Jaffeir and has successfully sought a pardon for the conspirators who planned to murder her father. Derek Hughes says Belvidera is a complex character; on the one hand, Belvidera has an admirable character, especially when compared to its surroundings. When Jaffeir tells her about the plan to eliminate the city leadership, she recognizes the depravity of the Senate, but does not approve of the conspiracy. (4) So she says to Jaffeir, “Can your big heart sink so horribly / with hired slaves, contract killers and common / knife stabbers mean ... to get a bully's wages / to cut the throats of villains while they sleep? "(" Can thy great heart descend so abominably low, / Mix with hired slaves, bravoes, and common / stabbers, ... and take a ruffian's wages / To cut the throats of wretches as they sleep? "). Their reasoning convinces Jaffeir not to participate in the plot, but instead to report it to the Senate.
On the other hand, Hughes says, “Belvidera is no different from the other characters. She is the tallest creature in the world of Venice Preserv'd , but she remains so until the very end ”. Belvidera is also resourceful and cunning when it comes to getting what she wants. Belvidera persuades Jaffeir to cut ties with the conspirators by telling him about Renault's sexual assault on them. (III. Ii. 181.) When it comes to convincing her father, the Senator, to pardon the conspirators, Belvidera brings the memory of the deceased mother into play (Otway V. i. 44.).
Jaffeir
Jaffeir is Belvidera's husband, Priuli's son-in-law and Pierre's boyfriend.
Jaffeir is the tragic hero Venice Preserv'd . He is expected to play the roles of husband, boyfriend, and activist. Michael DePorte says, Most readers rarely, if ever, admire Jaffeir for anything; they can only sympathize with him as as a man torn on the horns of a terrible dilemma; the dilemma of loyalty to Pierre and Belvidera. ("Most readers seldom, if ever, admire Jaffeir for anything, they can sympathize with him only as a man torn on the horns of a terrible dilemma;" that dilemma being his divided loyalties between Belvidera and Pierre "). Because of his friendship with Pierre, Jaffeir promises his loyalty to Pierre and the accomplices, but because of his love for Belvidera, he betrays Pierre and the conspirators.
According to Bywaters, Jaffeir can easily be compared to Titus Oates , especially since the Papist conspiracy occurred close in time to the production of Venice Preserv'd , as well as the Catholic terminology Pierre used in relation to Jaffeir. The religious echoes of Venice Preserv'd allowed Bettie Proffitt to compare Jaffeir with Adam in her article on Venice Preserv'd religious symbolism .
Pierre
Pierre is Jaffeir's friend and Aquilina's lover. He is a foreign soldier in the service of Venice and at the same time a conspirator against the Venetian Senate.
Pierre discovers that while he was absent (presumably during the war), Senator Antonio entered into a sexual relationship with his lover Aquilina. In the hope of justice, he takes the matter before the Senate, but is dismissed on the grounds that such behavior is one of the privileges of a senator. (I. i. 206-217). This rejection is the cause of Pierre's entry into an anti-state conspiracy.
Pierre is the spokesman for the conspirators and delivers some eloquent speeches during the play. Pierre has little trouble winning Jaffeir over to the conspirators' plan by turning Jaffeir's desire for revenge against his father-in-law Priuli into a vengeance against the entire Senate.
Even if Pierre Jaffeir is manipulated, he is and remains his loyal and devoted friend. When Pierre introduces Jaffeir to his co-conspirators, he says: “I brought my everything into the public inventory, / I only had one friend and I will share him with you!” (“I've brought my All into the publick Stock , / I had but one friend, and him I'll share amongst you! ”) (II. 310-11) Pierre is not only connected to Jaffeir, but also loyal to his co-conspirators until the end.
Some of Pierre's speeches in the play were banned by the censors because of the harsh political jargon . Bywaters believes that Venice Preserv'd is an attack on the Whigs ' party and that Pierre's speeches are the vehicle for it (“... and Pierre's accusation of a' new Tyranny '... turns the Whigs' rhetoric of tyranny and arbitrary power against them. ”) Pierre's charismatic speeches aroused such a reaction from the audience that the Times wrote,“ The audience seemed more ecstatic with each development of rebel villainy. ”After an assassination attempt on George III. The Venice Preserv'd performance that night almost caused an uproar, with the result that all subsequent performances were canceled. Thus Venice Preserv'd seven years not listed in London, was allowed to return until the 1,802th Pierre's role, however, was heavily censored and henceforth lacked his idealism.
Priuli
Priuli is the father of Belvidera and a Senator from Venice. According to DePort, Priuli is a complex character, as he emits different signals in relation to Belvidera. Priuli calls Belvidera his “age's darling”, who defines everything that his heart loves (“who is all that his heart holds dear”), but according to Jaffeir, Priuli rather protects himself before he perceives Belvidera's interests: “Yours inexperienced pilot threw us on a rock when your ship, which you were building for safety, first picked you up. ”(“ Your unskilled pilot / Dashed us upon a rock, when to your boat / You made for safety, entered first yourself ”) (I. i. 36.). Priuli disinherited his only child when the latter chose a man without his permission and married him.
context
The play contains a number of political parallels. The role of Senator Antonio is supposed to be a reference to Shaftesbury and the plot is similar to, among other comparable conspiracies, the Gunpowder plot . But the proximity to the so-called “Spanish conspiracy” of 1618 against Venice should also be recognizable.
The lagoon city of Venice as the location of the action had occasionally been used as a proxy for London, but the subtext that was most conspicuous to the contemporary audience was the parallel to the Exclusion Bill (an example would be the play by Dryden Absalom and Achitophel ). One reason for the play's outstanding initial success was its political allusions.
Venice Preserv'd also has some anti-feminist content. Since the play was written during the time of the English Restoration , when women's rights were very few, the moving central content of the play deals with the vulnerability of women: Aquilina, the courtesan, receives little attention from the men in the play; Her lover Pierre refuses to let her in on the conspiracy against the Senate and Antonio never calls her by name, only refers to her as his little "Nacky" (a slang term for the female genitals); Belvidera is reduced to the value of a pledge when it is placed in the hands of men her husband hardly knows; Jaffeir's honor takes precedence over Belvidera and this tension between love and honor is the crisis of male characters; At the end of the play, Jaffeir chooses his devotion to his friend over his devotion to his wife, and both men die with honor while Belvidera suffers an inglorious death resulting from her insanity. Contemporary theatergoers have been receptive to this tragic tension between the characters' public and private engagements.
Venice Preserv'd was one of the first so-called " she-tragedy " pieces in English . So a tragedy that revolves around the fate of a woman. The audience at that time reacted to the pathos of the character of Belvidera, who at the time was literally written on the body of the tragedy actress Elizabeth Barry and also used Barry's phenomenal success a year earlier in the role of the similar helpless Monimia in Otway's "The Orphan or The Unhappy Marriage ".
Of all the characters, however, Belvidera is the most powerless figure within the overwhelming political and social turmoil in the play. Each of the characters is in a conflict between the social and personal laws of their own class and their self. Belvidera finds herself in a field of tension between her loyalty to her father and love. Jaffeir always has to choose between "honor" and love, as well as between friendship and ideals. Priuli has to choose between love for his daughter and his personal pride. Belvidera always remained a sought-after and pre-eminent role for actresses because her tragic situation most touched the audience.
success
After the successful premiere of Venice Preserv'd in 1682, Otway became the pride of London. Nonetheless, the financial situation of the Duke's Theater prevented him from making significant profits from his work. The contemporary poet Robert Gould described it as saying that Otway may have a large body (“fat”), but “hunger” nonetheless. Venice Preserv'd did not survive into the 21st century as the epitome of tragedy, but was one of the most famous and important English tragedies for over 100 years.
On January 21, 1905, the drama “The Saved Venice” was premiered in the Lessing Theater in Berlin (dramaturgy: Otto Brahm ). Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote it from August 1902 to July 1904 based on the original material by Otway. However, the piece was granted only "little success". One reason, so the content of most of the reviews, is the lack of topicality and that a "historical sense" is required to understand the piece.
On April 10, 1865, John Wilkes Booth , the actor and later murderer of Abraham Lincoln , told Louis J. Weichmann, a later main witness in the trial, that he was through with the stage and the only piece he wanted to play in the future was Venice Preserv'd be. Although Weichmann did not understand this statement at the time, it was later classified as a hidden allusion to the plot to assassinate Lincoln .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Thomas Otway: Venice Preserv'd. In: The Broadview Anthology of Restoration & Early Eighteenth Century Drama. Broadview Press, Concise ed. Peterborough, Ontario 2001, ISBN 1-55111-270-1 , pp. 381-426.
- ^ David Bywaters: Venice, Its Senate, and Its Plot in Otway's Venice Preserv'd. In: Modern Philology. 80, 3, 1983, p. 256.
- ↑ Derek W. Hughes: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Vol. 11, No. 3: Restoration and Eighteenth Century. Summer 1971, pp. 437-457.
- ^ History of Productions of Venice Preserv'd. Peter Gill Productions. Np, April 23, 2008. Web. June 8, 2010.
- ^ David Bywaters: Venice, Its Senate, and Its Plot in Otway's Venice Preserv'd. In: Modern Philology. 80, 3, 1983, p. 256.
- ↑ Michael DePorte: Otway and the Straits of Venice. In: Papers on Language & Literature. 18, 3, 1982, p. 245.
- ↑ Hofmannsthal's diary entry
- ^ Lothar Köhn: Literature - History: Contributions to German literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. LIT Verlag, Münster 2000, ISBN 3-8258-4069-7 . ( limited preview in Google Book search)
- ^ Michael W Kauffman: American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies . Random House, 2004, ISBN 0-375-50785-X , p. 207.
literature
- Venice Preserv'd; Or, a Plot Discover'd. A tragedy by Thomas Otway 1682. (online)
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The Saved Venice: Tragedy in Five Acts. based on the literary model by Thomas Otway. 1904. (Digital copy: S. Fischer Verlag, 1905, ISBN 978-0-484-94553-0 , (online) )
- Elizabeth Howe: The First English Actresses: Women and Drama 1660-1700 . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, ISBN 0-521-38444-3 .