The Council of Ten was apparently moved by the appeal. It answered the petition by the following resolution:—
‘The case of Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino, and Livio second, brothers and sisters, the children of Giovanni Sanudo, condemned to death by this Council on July twenty-ninth, is so serious; the petition of these poor children is so humble, so honest and so reasonable, that it behooves the piety and clemency of our Council to grant the said Giovanni Sanudo a safe-conduct, good for two years, in order that during this period he may provide for the future of his family.’
Sanudo came back, and before the two years had expired he obtained a prolongation of the grace for two years more, at the end of which time he presented another petition worded in the same manner, which was also granted; and so on from two years to two years until 1621, nineteen years after the crime, he being still technically under sentence of death.
Now, however, he obtained a formal pardon from his wife’s family, the Cappello. This curious document reads as follows:—
In the name of God and of the Holy Trinity, March thirtieth, 1621.
I, Carlo Cappello, son of the late Pietro Cappello, considering the weakness and the lamentable vicissitudes to which humanity is subject, and desirous of forgiving the shortcomings and misdeeds of others, in order that the Lord our God may protect me also, and desiring, too, the full pardon of every sin: do forgive my brother-in-law, Giovanni Sanudo, the offences he may have committed against me, promising henceforth to bear him neither hatred nor malice, and I pray God to grant us both a good Easter and the pardon of every sin.
(Signed) Carlo Cappello.
Pietro Cappello.
Livio Cappello.
Having obtained forgiveness of his wife’s family, Giovanni Sanudo now looked about for a means of extorting a final pardon from the Council of Ten. There existed in the Venetian states a small town, called Sant’ Omobono, which had received, as the reward of some ancient service rendered to the Republic, the privilege of setting at liberty every year two outlaws or two bravi. Sanudo succeeded in winning the good graces of the municipality, and was then presented by the mayor and aldermen to the Signory as one of the yearly candidates for a free pardon. The Council of Ten then permanently ratified its decree of immunity, and Giovanni Sanudo was once more a free man. Considering the usual character of the Council, it is hard not to surmise that it had found some cause for regretting the sentence it had passed. The poor murdered woman had confessed and received absolution before death: may we not reasonably suppose that, after all, there had been something to confess?
There is ground for believing it possible that Shakespeare may have used the original murder as part of the groundwork of his Othello. If we compare the dates and glance at the history of Italian literature, we may reasonably conclude that Shakespeare, after perhaps planning his tragedy on a tale of Giraldi’s, was much struck by the details of Sanudo’s crime, and especially by the murderer’s wish that his wife should confess before dying.
Mr. Rawdon Brown supposed the poet to have used another incident, related by Marin Sanudo in his voluminous journal, but the hypothesis involves an anachronism. Othello is thought by good authorities to have been first played in London in the autumn of 1602, only a few months after the crime in the Giudecca; whereas Mr. Rawdon Brown’s heroine was not murdered until thirteen years later.