Racecraft and the Indian Queen in The Temple of Love (1635)

Abstract

Critical race readings of early modern drama have often centred discourses on colour and the binary of black and white in English racecraft, with very important results. However, I submit the need to expand our analytical lenses further, to effectively engage the recognized instability of racial difference beyond skin colour and the dominant blackwhite binary. By doing so, we can unearth deeper nuances of the representation of women of colour on the early modern stage. Seventeenthcentury English drama witnessed a growth in portrayals of Indian queens or similarly elite Indian women, who, despite their layers of alterity in gender, race and religion, were frequently represented on reverential terms of wealth, power and authority. Crucially, this was achieved by their alterity being acknowledged yet carefully managed, enabling their celebration. It is this remarkable management, and indeed racial privileging, of the elite Indian woman in early modern English drama that is the subject of this paper. Here, I will address the potency of the Indian imperial woman or queen in the English cultural imagination in this period, built in no small part from her frequent dramatic representations, and how her influence emerged at a moment of national crisis: during the personal rule of Charles I and especially in relation to the contested queenship of his foreign consort, Henrietta Maria. I will examine William Davenant’s 1635 court masque, The Temple of Love, a production commissioned by Henrietta Maria and in which she performed Indamora, the Indian queen. This masque highlights perhaps the most significant yet overlooked aspect of Indian representations in early modern drama: