Here is a copyrighted commentary on William Hogarth's portrait of the Conduitt family amateur production of The Indian Emperor with a link to the commentary:
A Scene from 'The Conquest of Mexico' (1732-35)
'This charming scene of amateur theatricals records a performance of Dryden's The Indian Emperor at the home of John Conduitt, Master of the Mint, in St George's Street, Hanover Square. In commissioning the scene, Conduitt chose not only to record an important moment in the life of his only daughter Catherine, shown here in black to the right of the stage, but also to commemorate the particularly glittering social occasion which had accompanied the children's performance. While the host and hostess appear only as portraits on the wall above their guests, Hogarth cleverly balances his composition to display the distinguished audience without detracting from the impact of the scene on stage. Here, Catherine and her friends act out a dramatic moment, reminiscent of The Beggar's Opera, in which the Spanish leader Cortez must choose between the love of two Indian princesses.
Amongst the guests, Hogarth draws particular attention to the three royal children, William, Duke of Cumberland, and his sisters Mary and Louisa, who stand before the fireplace immediately behind their governess, Mary, Lady Deloraine. She in turn bends forward, encouraging one of her own daughters to pick up a fallen fan. To her left, the Duchess of Richmond watches the play, while her husband leans on the back of her chair. Behind him, the Earl of Pomfret, wearing the red sash of the Order of the Bath, engages in conversation with Thomas Hill, Secretary to the Board of Trade, while the Duke of Montagu looks on. The scene is to some extent dominated by a bust of Isaac Newton by Roubillac over the fireplace. Conduitt, who had succeeded Newton at the Mint and had married his niece Catherine, was the first biographer of his former colleague and friend, whose memory he did much to promote.'
By Neil McWilliam
http://hogarth.chez-alice.fr/gallery21.htm
This is Robert Dodd's 1792 engraving after Hogarth:
Discussion Questions from Sheena
1. Throughout the text, we see some romantic relationships develop
between the conquering male Spaniards and the female natives. However,
while Dryden hints at requited love at the end of the play (between
Cydaria and Cortez), he never explicitly brings
them together. Is this an intentional move on Dryden's part to express
to his audience that this type of relationship between the conquering
imperialists and the natives could never be, or is simply the way the
play should have ended?
2. The Indian Emperour was written 20 years before Dryden's
conversion to Catholicism. What are his views on Catholicism as
expressed in the play, especially in the forced conversion scene (Act V,
scene II)?
3. The women in the play are given many responsibilities when it
comes to moving the plot along. Complete war is avoided because of
Cydaria's influences over Cortez, but also encouraged because of
Almeria's treachery. How do you think Dryden presents women
in his work?
Link between the exotic and the royal family:
In another of Dryden's heroic dramas, The Conquest of Granada (1670), the role of Almahide, who is engaged to the Moor king Boabdelin, was played by the king's mistress, Nell Gwyn. The production of the play was held up for several months, as the company had to wait for Gwyn's return to the stage after giving birth to the king's illegitimate son: http://www.berkshirehistory.com/bios/ngwynne.htmlHere are a few sources:
Harris, Max, "Aztec Maidens in Satin Gowns: Alterity and Dialogue in Dryden's The Indian Emperour and Hogarth's The Conquest of Mexico," Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 15.2 (1991): 59-70.Hughes, Derek, "Dryden's The Indian Emperour and Georges de Scudéry's Alaric," Review of English Studies: A Quarterly Journal of English Literature and the English Language 33 (1982): 47-51.
Perkins, Merle L., "Dryden's The Indian Emperour and Voltaire's Alzire," Comparative Literature 9.3 (1957): 229-37.
Alssid, Michael W, "The Perfect Conquest: A Study of Theme, Structure and Characters in Dryden's The Indian Emperor," Studies in Philology 59 (1962): 539-559.
Ringler, Richard N., "Two Sources for Dryden's The Indian Emperour," Philological Quarterly 42 (1963): 423-429.
Loftis, John, "Exploration and Enlightenment: Dryden's The Indian Emperour and Its Background," Philological Quarterly 45 (1966): 71-84.
Dryden's play is the sequel to The Indian Queen, a play he co-wrote with Sir Robert Howard, the brother of his wife Elizabeth and a fellow Restoration playwright. By the time Dryden decided to do a sequel, he and Howard had had a bit of a falling out based on their competing views of the value of using dramatic verse to treat serious subjects. Howard maintained that rhymed poetry (both writers would have considered blank verse to be a type of prose) was unsuited for serious drama, as it was artificial and did not realistically imitate the way people spoke. This debate had caused significant tension between the two during the period in which Dryden wrote "The Indian Emperor" and by the time the play came out in a second edition, a full-fledged dispute had broken out, a dispute which spawned Dryden's "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," one of the premiere works of literary criticism in English up to that point. Howard responded to Dryden, who then affixed his essay "In Defense of An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (which was shorter and served to clarify a few arguments which Howard had misinterpreted in his response) to the second edition of the "The Indian Queen." The first essay, easily the more important of the two, can be found here: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/drampoet.html
ReplyDeleteOh, forgot to mention this! Howard never replied to Dryden's second essay, possibly because he really had nowhere to go with his argument and possibly because his relationship with Dryden and his sister had become so strained as a result of the disagreement.
DeleteI just finished The Cambridge Companion of John Dryden. A lot of the chapters are really cool and relate to this play specifically, so I'll provide a little from the relevant ones and a summary of each:
ReplyDeleteZwicker's "Composing a literary life" attempts to wrestle with the notion of the "works" of Dryden as a collected whole. He says, "Who first thought of 'The Works of John Dryden?' Not, I think, the poet himself. During his long writing life Dryden showed little interest in collecting or revising his work [although, significantly, he revised "The Indian Emperor" four times]; neither he nor apparently anyone else kept his manuscripts; and Dryden seldom wrote of, or even seems to have imagined, a coherent and progressive literary career of the kind that was often on Spenser's or Milton's mind."
...
"What set a good deal of Dryden's work in motion was competition and combat, the spinning together of interest and vindication, and this while the poet wrote with an eye on the commerce of the stage and print and on the favor of patronage."
The next essay is Sherman's "Dryden and the theatrial imagination," whiches speaks more about his later plays, highlighting the ways Dryden used "doubles," a tactic he uses successfully in "The Indian Emperor" (which is not discussed by Sherman).
The next essay is Paulson's "Dryden and the energies of satire," a fascinating look at why Dryden is often considered a master satirist, though "in the twenty volumes of the standard edition of Dryden's works there are only three major satires." Dryden's satirical abilities are not on display in "The Indian Emperor," so I won't spend muh time here, but it's a great essay.
More! Brown's "Dryden and the imperial imagination" is next. Though there is no official representative of English imperialism in "The Indian Emperor," Brown's chapter is helpful for providing a framework for understanding how Dryden thought about imperialism in general. Brown notes, "Ironically, the Stuart monarchs who were the focus of Dryden's poetic praise and political allegiance during the period from 1660 to 1668 were weak and reactionary figures, whose attempts to recreate a prior absolutist era impeded rather than promoted the national trajectory toward empire." In terms of the heroic drama of which "The Indian Emperor" is an example, Brown says, "the prominence of a global setting in this subgenre is not easy to explain. The exotic sites and characters, especially in the new world, are sometimes used as a way of attacking Dutch and Spanish colonialism, by dramatizing its cruelties and contrasting the benevolent motives of the British. The representation of political power and the challenges to monarchy serve in many instances as an allusion to contemporary English politics and the problematic situation of Charles II's anchronistic absolutist court. But on other occasions, the elaborately staged representation of the exotic int hese plays must have served as an escape from the complexities and anxieties of recent English history." Brown talks specifically about "The Indian Emperor," commenting, "Heroic nostalgia characterizes Dryden's..."The Indian Emperor," in a which a dvierse cast of characters enacts a complex and intersecting series of love and honor paradoxes, which, nevertheless, mirror the play's affective representation of imperial loss and regret. Cortez and Montezuma are parallel heroic figures, of different cultures, whose honor is bound up with their respective historical empires. In "The Indian Emperor," the fall of Mexico is technically brought about by the direct military actions of the unscrupulous and cruel Spanish characters, Vasquez and Pizarro, who act to instigate battles without direct permission of the admirable Cortez, when accident and oversight remove them from his direct supervision. Cortez's sympathies lie with the Mexicans, both because of his natural heroic affinity with Montezuma, and because of his love for Montezuma's daughter, Cydaria. Thus the trope of the torture of Montezuma and his pagan 'priest,' so prominent in the historical accounts of the time, is represented in this play as a kind of vigilante action by Pizarro, who is halted in the act and reprimanded by Cortez for his cruelty. In the logic of the play, the real plot crises are generated by the love and honor paradoxes, which play out in a series of rivalries centered on the two heroic protagonists: Montezuma loves Almeria, but she loves Cortz; Cortez loves Cydaria, but she is also loves by Orbellan...As a marytred king, Montezuma clearly evokes the royal martyrdom of immediate English history, the execution of Charles I in 1649."
ReplyDeleteUp next is Davis' "Dryden and the invention of Augustan culture." Again, this chapter does not have specific relevance to "The Indian Emperor," but it's an interesting look at the way Dryden defined a whole era of English poetry. Davis responds to decades of "anti-Augustan" criticism, centralizing the poetic movement in Dryden's works specifically.
ReplyDeleteNext is Ricks' "Dryden's triplets," a fascinating examination of Dryden's tendency to break the monotony of his poetic couplets with the occasional triplet. Dryden does not employ the triplet in the play we just read if my memory serves, but it is one of the hallmarks of his poetry and Ricks does a good job in discussing it.
Love's "Dryden's London" takes a look at how Dryden experienced London as a physical place and a metaphorical space. London does not figure into "The Indian Emperor," but I feel that this will be a good article to look at as we move forward with our Dryden studies.
The next article is Kewes' "Dryden's theatre and the passions of politics," which argues that "Restoration theatre was political theatre. To write for the stage or to become involved in the theatre business in the early 1660s...was to declare one's royalist and pro-Stuart credentials. Dryden's...choice of the profitable dramatic medium signaled his desire to make money. Yet it also reiterated his commitment, manifest in his versified celebrations of the Restoration, to the Stuart monarchy."
ReplyDelete...
"Dryden was not typical of the class of professional playwrights who would dominate the period. His position as shareholder and laureate afforded him, at least initially, a measure of financial security denied to [others]...Dryden was, moreover, a public figure in a way [other writers] were not. No longer an expression of a private individual's view, his writings came to be interpreted in the context of royal policy."
...
"In 'The Indian Emperor,'...[Dryden wrote when] Anglican royalists under the leadership of the Duke of York pushed for war against the Dutch whom they saw as dangerous aspirers to the universal empire of trade...the play dramatizes the conquest of Mexico by England's old imperial rival, Spain. Drawing on vilifying accounts of Spain, Dryden attacks the cruelty, greed, and irreligion of the conquerors."
Mullans' "Dryden's anonymity" examines the ways in which Dryden benefited from and was hurt by his role as a public figure.
Engetsu's "Dryden and the modes of Restoration sociability" discusses Dryden as a public figure. This was my least favorite chapter, but, regardless, it's of little use for our examination of this specific play.
ReplyDeleteNext is Barnard's "Dryden and patronage," which explores Dryden's relationships with (and dependence on) his patrons. This chapter goes well with the one which follows it, Patterson's "Dryden and political allegiance," which attempts to unravel Dryden's the twists and turns of Dryden's politics. Patterson begins, "The facts are these: Dryden opened his career as a writer by defining himself as a supporter of Oliver Cromwell...a short time later he reappeared on the literary scene as a celebrant of the Restoration...at the time of the Second Dutch War, when the first enthusiasm for Charles II had been considerably tarnished by events and his own behavior, Dryden came to the king's defense indirectly...in 1672, however, in expectation of the Third Dutch War, Dryden could be seen in print as a devoted servant of James, Duke of York, a loyalty he retained long past the point where it ceased to be helpful for him."
...
"It was scarcely necessary for Dryden to advertise his political allegiances, and their shifts, in such a definitive way. Having done it once, however, he had to keep doing it. History, having pushed him into the public sphere, would change its own direction so many times during his lifetime that he was constantly playing catch up."
Thanks so much, Zack!
ReplyDeleteNext is Spurr's "The piety of John Dryden," a useful look at Dryden's oft-changing religious views. Spurr says, "there is iittle evidence to suggest that Dryden's own journey to the Church of Rome was protracted or even difficult. Indeed, religion was perhaps of only intermittant interest to Dryden, and then only on his terms...to explore Dryden's religious views is to grapple with an exceptional case, with a writer, thinker, and individual who could see further than the confines of the bitter religious divisions of the seventeenth century and who could marshal imaginative and cultural resources that were beyond the grasp of many contemporaries."
ReplyDelete...
"Apart from a few letters, Dryden's writings were for punlic consumption. He was a playwright and poet of public affairs, not a confessional writer in either sense of the word. He did not write to share his own spiritual joys and despair with his readers...Dryden's cast of mind was skpetical and inquiring. His imagination was suited to dialogues and debates, to the exploration of arguments, images, characters, and voices rather than to the exposition of a single authoritative points of view. It has been recognized that Dryden did not lack self-belief and could be as secure in his own certaintanties, even if they were a refusal of simple-minded truths, as many a divine. Hs contemporaries knew him as a proud and assertive man beneath his nervous public demeanor."
...
"There was a strained relationship between religious positions and his own standing in his day as poet and, particularly, a religious poet. Time and time again Dryden explicitly raised the question of whether as a poet and a layman he was qualified to discuss religion, the province of the divine, before he went on to do just that."
...
"Dryden's poetry erecte facade after facade to mask his own private religion, Indeed 'religion' may be the wrong word term to describe the amalgam of of associations and values to which Dryden held, and we may need a broader notion that is more in tune with his instincts and culture."
Cotterill's "Dryden's Fables and the judgment of art" will, for obvious reasons, be more relevant to discuss in this upcoming week.
Finally, Zwicker adds an epilogue in which he argues for Dryden's place among the modern (as opposed to classical) canon, despite his obvious infatuation with the classical works and writers.