Discuss Venice Preserved as a Restoration Tragedy.

 

Thomas Otway's "Venice Preserved" as a Restoration Tragedy

Thomas Otway’s masterpiece, Venice Preserved (1682), stands as the finest example of Restoration Tragedy, marking a significant shift from the earlier style of drama. In the early Restoration period, the stage was dominated by "Heroic Plays" written in rhymed couplets, featuring superhuman heroes and grand battles. Otway, however, moved away from this artificial style. He returned to the Elizabethan tradition of blank verse, reminiscent of Shakespeare, to create a drama that felt more natural and emotionally resonant. Instead of forcing the audience to admire a perfect hero, Otway wanted them to feel intense pity for flawed, suffering human beings. This focus on deep emotional impact and domestic suffering classifies the play as a "Pathetic Tragedy" or "She-Tragedy," a sub-genre that became very popular during the Restoration.

The play is also a quintessential Restoration drama because it is deeply rooted in the political chaos of its time. Written during the volatile Exclusion Crisis and the aftermath of the Popish Plot, the play serves as a political allegory. The conspiracy against the Senate in Venice mirrors the political tension in England between the Whigs and the Tories. However, Otway masterfully blends this political backdrop with a heartbreaking domestic conflict. The protagonist, Jaffeir, is not a decisive warrior but a vacillating, emotional man torn between two powerful forces: his loyalty to his friend Pierre (and the rebels) and his love for his wife Belvidera. This internal struggle between Love and Honor is a defining theme of the era, but Otway treats it with a psychological depth that was rare for his contemporaries.

"Oh Belvidera! I'm the wretchedst creature
e'er crawled on earth..."

Ultimately, what cements Venice Preserved as a supreme Restoration tragedy is its overwhelming sense of pathos. The play is driven not by the fall of a great king, but by the suffering of the innocent Belvidera and the emotional collapse of Jaffeir. Belvidera is the emotional center of the play; her madness and death are designed to tear at the audience's heartstrings, a technique that would dominate English tragedy for the next century. By combining high political stakes with intimate domestic sorrow, Otway created a tragedy that moved the Restoration audience to tears rather than just polite applause, proving that the genre had evolved from the heroic to the human.