Nay, now they pull so hard. Farewell. [_She dies._
MAID. She's dead.
Breathless and dead.
This may seem very sad stuff, but it would be unfair to judge Otway's
plays by this one extract. "Venice Preserved" is now shelved as an
acting drama, but it was formerly received with extraordinary favour,
and is by no means deficient in poetic merit. Campbell, the poet,
speaks of it, in his life of Mrs. Siddons, as "a tragedy which so
constantly commands the tears of audiences that it would be a work of
supererogation for me to extol its tenderness. There may be dramas
where human character is depicted with subtler skill--though Belvidera
might rank among Shakespeare's creations; and 'Venice Preserved' may
not contain, like 'Macbeth' and 'Lear,' certain high conceptions which
exceed even the power of stage representation--but it is as full as a
tragedy can be of all the pathos that is transfusable into action."
Belvidera was one of Mrs. Siddons's greatest characters. Campbell
notes that "until the middle of the last century the ghosts of Jaffier
and Pierre used to come in upon the stage, haunting Belvidera in her
last agonies, which certainly require no aggravation from spectral
agency.
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