The Indian Queen and The Indian Emperour

Abstract

Abstract John Dryden’s collaboration with Robert Howard on The Indian Queen (1664) and its sequel, The Indian Emperour (1665), by Dryden alone, project the politics of imperialism and colonial discourse onto late seventeenth-century dramatic constructions of sex, love, and honor. Like The Tempest and its seventeenth-century redactions, The Indian Queen and The Indian Emperour appropriate Indian culture as a strategy for overcoming political and ideological instability in England. Dryden’s representation of the colonization of the Native American land and culture dramatizes the need to eradicate or at least control the wildness within the English man. During the Restoration, foreign expansion and trade held the promise of strengthening and unifying the English nation by increasing its economic as well as military power.1 Significantly, Dryden portrays the destruction of native culture ambivalently: Montezuma is no monstrous or barbaric Caliban, but a mimic of the qualities of an idealized English nobility. Other than his heroic son, Guyomar, however, Montezuma’s Indian subjects are rebellious and self-serving. And, with the exception of Cortes,2 the Spanish conquerors are portrayed as greedy, ambitious, and inhumane. Nevertheless, it is the Spanish Cortes who ultimately represents the ideal ruler in the play, and the colonization of the New World is presented as politically necessary and morally correct. The crucial difference between the two heroes lies in their relationships to the native woman: Cortes is able to resist her powers and to maintain self-control, while Montezuma is obsessed by his desire for the Indian Princess, and this passion causes him to lose his head and his kingdom. In this respect, the blame for the fall of Mexico is deflected from the colonizers and Montezuma onto the Indian Princess.