SOURCE: Solomon, Harry M. “The Rhetoric of ‘Redressing Grievances’: Court Propaganda as the Hermeneutical Key to Venice Preserv'd.” ELH 53, no. 2 (summer 1986): 289-310.

In the following essay, Solomon argues that critics of Venice Preserv'd have understood neither the age in which the play was written nor the author's political intentions.

Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd (1682) has always posed interpretive problems for literary critics and stage directors.¹ Although initially received as a Tory “Paean of Triumph” over the Whigs who sought to exclude the Duke of York from the throne, the play resists simple thematic dichotomy into discredited Whig rebels and vindicated Tory oligarchy. Frustrated in their attempts to interpret the play as coherent political allegory, critics have almost universally tempered their admiration of the play with censure of its inconsistencies of theme and characterization.

In order both to do justice to the contemporary reception of Otway's play as unambiguously Tory...