SOURCE: DePorte, Michael. “Otway and the Straits of Venice.” Papers on Language and Literature 18, no. 3 (summer 1982): 245-57.

In the following essay, DePorte argues that Venice Preserv'd offers no solutions to the problems that it depicts and no answers or lessons to ease the pain of uncertainty.

Venice Preserv'd is a play about betrayal: betrayed oaths, betrayed secrets, betrayed bonds of family and friendship, and, not least, betrayed expectations.¹ The play is disorienting from first to last, for the audience as well as for the characters, because in many ways it skews familiar patterns of comedy. The heroes are young lovers oppressed by old men; however, as the action unfolds we find that the old men never lose the upper hand; they survive and the heroes die. When the play begins Pierre has been “cuckolded” by Antonio; at its close Antonio “dies” in perverted ecstasy while Pierre is led...