.

The plot of the Indian Emperor is certainly of our author's own
composition; since even the malignant assiduity of Langbaine has been
unable to point out any author from whom it is borrowed. The play was
first acted in 1665, and received with great applause.

CONNECTION
OF
THE INDIAN EMPEROR
TO
THE INDIAN QUEEN [A].

[Footnote A: This argument was printed, and dispersed amongst the
audience upon the first night of representation. Hence Bayes is made
to say, in the Rehearsal, that he had printed many reams, to instil
into the audience some conception of his plot.]

The conclusion of the Indian Queen (part of which poem was wrote
by me) left little matter for another story to be built on, there
remaining but two of the considerable characters alive, viz. Montezuma
and Orazia. Thereupon the author of this thought it necessary to
produce new persons from the old ones; and considering the late Indian
Queen, before she loved Montezuma, lived in clandestine marriage
with her general Traxalla, from those two he has raised a son and two
daughters, supposed to be left young orphans at their death. On the
other side, he has given to Montezuma and Orazia, two sons and a
daughter; all now supposed to be grown up to mens' and womens' estate;
and their mother, Orazia, (for whom there was no further use in the
story,) lately dead.

So that you are to imagine about twenty years elapsed since the
coronation of Montezuma; who, in the truth of the history, was a great
and glorious prince; and in whose time happened the discovery and
invasion of Mexico, by the Spaniards, under the conduct of Hernando
Cortez, who, joining with the Traxallan Indians, the inveterate
enemies of Montezuma, wholly subverted that flourishing empire;--the
conquest of which is the subject of this dramatic poem.

I have neither wholly followed the story, nor varied from it; and, as
near as I could, have traced the native simplicity and ignorance of
the Indians, in relation to European customs;--the shipping, armour,
horses, swords, and guns of the Spaniards, being as new to them, as
their habits and their language were to the Christians.

The difference of their religion from ours, I have taken from the
story itself; and that which you find of it in the first and fifth
acts, touching the sufferings and constancy of Montezuma in his
opinions, I have only illustrated, not altered, from those who have
written of it.

PROLOGUE

Almighty cri