The Island Princess and Race

Colonial Context

As we shall see, the colonial context for Fletcher's text impacts the play's racial politics. In general terms the rise of European colonialism in Africa and the New World and the increased trade and diplomatic links with Asia and the East had lead to more contact between European and non-European peoples. Differences in the histories of these cultural meetings meant that the "race" of peoples encountered was variously understood. For instance, inhabitants of Persia, India, or Turkey were more easily seen by Europeans as in possession of a culture or history, while Native Americans were often seen as uncivilized. 4 European colonialism complicated the ways "race" was understood, and racial thinking developed and changed as a result of interrelation between ideologies of European superiority and colonial practices toward different kinds of outsiders. 5 Clearly the colonial setting is important to our understanding of this play, but exactly what Fletcher is trying to tell his audience, or indeed which colonial spheres of operation he invokes in his representation, has been the subject of recent critical debate. According to the 1647 folio edition of Fletcher's works (printed by Humphrey Moseley) The Island Princess is set in "India," but the play itself refers more specifically to two islands, Ternata and Tidore, in the Bay of Bengal, which were better known as the Spice Islands at the time. This setting is extremely important since these islands had been at the center of a fierce colonial struggle for over a hundred years as Portugal, Holland, and to a lesser extent England had sought to control the valuable trade for rare spices. 6 Indeed Shankar Raman in an influential essay "Imaginary Islands: Staging the East" has argued that the ghostly presence of the English explorer and privateer Francis Drakewho arrived in the Portuguese-controlled Ternata on his circumnavigation of the globe on November 3, 1579-informs Fletcher's play. 7 Drake pretended to the Portuguese garrison that his voyage had been completed faster than any previous Portuguese expeditions, and then stole the trade from under his host's noses by negotiating a verbal agreement with the king of Ternata to traffic with England for spices. In the competition between the two Portuguese, Armusia and Ruy Dias, for the Princess Quisara, Raman detects the ghostly presence of Drake. He argues that the bitter rivalry between Drake and the Portuguese for control of the islands is refigured when the brave newcomer Armusia (Drake) supercedes the garrison's commander Ruy Dias, "a near perfect representation of the real form taken by Portuguese authority in its India possessions: appointed master of the fort by the Portuguese king, he is a nobleman or fidalgo who bases his identity upon the honor of blood and social status." 8 According to this reading, then, Fletcher's play is an allegory of national competition between rival imperial, or aspiring imperial, powers.

But The Island Princess has also been seen as indebted to a different colonial context, the English experiences in Jamestown, owing to its depiction of the marriage between a Christian European and a native woman. Gordon McMullan suggests that John Rolfe's marriage to Pocahontas is "thoroughly rehearsed, though geographically transposed" as Fletcher's play "demonstrates through the metaphor of the native woman as object of desire the anxieties which seem characteristic of the colonial." 9 McMullan and Raman are united, then, in reading a play about Portuguese empire as a comment on English colonialism, though they suggest that the precise details of colonial context the play engages with vary. McMullan's analysis also usefully signals the central importance of gender to the play's racial politics. The rhetoric of colonial exploration in the Renaissance possessed a strongly gendered dynamic as new terrain is often described as a fertile female available for marriage with European male colonialists. 10 Certainly in the play's representation of Quisara as a desirable bride, we can see echoes of the kinds of descriptions commonplace in promotional colonial literature of the time. The aspiration to marry Quisara motivates her suitors' actions in the play. Even before the governor captures her brother, the opening scene describes how she is plagued by all the local nobles and kings as they compete for her hand in marriage ("all the neighbour Princes, are mad for her," 1.1.50). But it soon becomes clear that Quisara will not marry a native Spice Islander. These men are represented as unworthy of her; the king of Siana says little and is inactive in rescuing her brother, the king of Bakam says much but likewise fails to rescue him, and the governor of Ternata has kidnapped him in dastardly fashion. The play thus speedily establishes that her hand will be won by one of the Portuguese colonists, either Ruy Dias, who "stands in favour" with Quisara ("he is no Portugall else," 1.1.88-89), or the newly arrived Armusia, "a brave companion" and one that "dares fight any where" (1.1.121-23).

Fletcher's representation of Quisara is distinctly similar to colonial propaganda of the time, such as Samuel Purchas's descriptions of America in terms of a female body. Virginia, for instance, is represented to potential colonists as a virgin in need of husbandry:

View her lovely looks (howsoever like a modest Virgin she is now vailed with wild Coverts and shadie Woods, expecting rather ravishment then marriage from her Native Savages) survey her Heavens, Elements, Situation; her divisions by armes of Bayes and Rivers into so goodly and well proportioned limmes and members; her Virgin portion nothing empaired, nay not yet improved, in Natures best Legacies; the neighbouring Regions and Seas so commodious and obsequious; [. . .] in all these you shall see, that she is worth the wooing and loves of the best Husband. 11 This rhetoric establishes Virginia, like Quisara, as a prize to be won by the "best husband." Furthermore, the urgency of the project is emphasized since unless speedy action is undertaken by English colonists Virginia's sexual status may change. The language is designed to foster in colonial male readers a sense of chivalry normally associated with romance writing, since Virginia needs protection from rape by her indigenous inhabitants. "Virginia" will respond favorably to such chivalric protection and will be transformed into the bride every man wants-beautiful, rich, and subservient. Purchas, then, is arguing for Virginia's preference for a European husband to protect her from the advances of "Native Savages." In The Island Princess similar sentiments can be detected as Quisara's indigenous suitors are maligned, and she is described as a valuable prize or commodity to be won by her future (Portuguese) husband. Hence, when the Portuguese soldiers discuss her beauty it becomes clear that, for Pyniero at least, her good looks are indelibly associated with her royal status: "She is a Princesse, and she must be faire" (1.1.46). To Christopher's innocent question "Is she not faire then?," he cynically responds "But her hopes are fairer?" (1.1.51) The test that Quisara sets up to determine who shall marry her thus possesses a racial dynamic, since she expects that only a European will be able to perform the "brave thing" (1.2.57) she demands of her suitor, as white men "have a power beyond ours that preserves you" (1.2.60). Certainly Ruy Dias understands her in these terms since he describes any personal failure in terms of national identity: "When I grow so cold, and disgrace my nation, / that from their hardy nurses sucke adventures, / 'Twere fit I wore a Tombstone" (1.2.86-88).

These gendered descriptions of land did not operate solely in relation to Western colonization. The East Indies were also represented in terms of male sexual possession of female terrain. Purchas employed identical rhetorical tropes in his descriptions of the Dutch conquest of the English spice factory on the island of Banda in 1620, representing the attack in similar ways. Banda is "a rich and beautiful bride [who] was once envied to English arms, and seemeth by the cries on both sides, to have been lately ravished from her new husband, unwarned, unarmed, I know not whither by greater force or fraud." 12 The English traders are thus constructed sympathetically as grieving new husbands deprived of the caresses of their lawful wife. In The Island Princess, then, the colonial context is important in terms of the text's representations of human difference. Indigenous men are represented as inferior to their European counterparts and hence as a corollary of this, native women are imagined as sexual terrain to be conquered by European colonists. In other words, the opening of The Island Princess seeks to legitimize European men's access to indigenous women since they are superior to foolish, cowardly, or dastardly indigenous men. Fletcher However, that Ruy Dias does fail to demonstrate any kind of "brave thing"-he prevaricates in the attempt to rescue Quisara's brother allowing Armusia to get there first-and also later plots Armusia's murder in dastardly fashion might complicate the distinction between Portuguese and native islander that the text originally set up. His nephew Pyniero views his uncle's behavior as rotten and diseased as he questions "to what scurvy things this love converts us? / What stinking things?" (3.1.92-93). Love is represented as causing Ruy Dias to behave without honor and this in turn results in a loss of Portuguese national identity. Pyniero's lines about "these Islanders" who are "false and desperate" "cruell, and crafty soules" (1.1.3-6), which opened the play, immediately established a hierarchy between honorable Portuguese and treacherous indigenous inhabitants. Thus when Dias repents his perfidious plan to have Armusia murdered, Pyniero sees it as a return, a "conversion" (4.2.57) to his former identity "I am glad to see this mans conversion, / I was afraid honor had been bedrid, / Or beaten out o'th'Island" (4.2.57-59). The blurring of different identities is noticeable as "Island" identity is here yoked to a Portuguese colonist, Dias, because of his dishonorable conduct. Again it is island identity that is represented as without honor, as in Pyniero's view no native male islander could live up to European conceptions of gentlemanly conduct. In fact, noticeably, Pyniero does not refer to Dias as "Portuguese" in the passages in which he condemns him-his uncle has forfeited that right. Dias is referred to as Portuguese only at the beginning of the play ("he is no Portugall else" 1.1.88-89) and at its conclusion when he helps to unmask the governor. Once Dias becomes treacherous, Pyniero describes only Armusio as Portuguese, "an honest man, a brave man, / A valiant, and a virtuous man, my country-man" (3.1.226-27), whereas Dias tries to describe him as an alien "that Armusia, that new thing, that stranger" (4.2.43). What seems to be happening, then, in The Island Princess is that Fletcher, through Dias's treachery and abdication of Portuguese national identity, temporarily undermines the distinction set up at the play's outset between honorable Portuguese and underhand Islander. The distinction is reasserted fairly quickly when Dias's honor is reestablished, but the fact that the boundary between colonist and colonized broke down at all does suggest that this play is not completely confident of European superiority over native inhabitants.

Race and Religion

As has already been hinted through Pyniero's use of the word "conversion" in relation to changes in Dias's behavior, differences in religion are one of the key ways that The Island Princess distinguishes between human groups. The connection between "race" and "religion" in the early modern period was a complex one, something that is reflected by the attitudes to conversion and the exchange of religions in the play. The religious dynamic to conceptions of "race" emerged during the Crusades. These religious wars resulted in the settlement of some Christians in Muslim lands and lead, of course, to intermingling. However, as Loomba describes, "these cross-overs do not really erode religious difference" because religious hostility was the reason that the contact was originally established. 14 However, conversion-particularly of foreign women to Christianity-was an accepted part of Christian patriarchy from the Crusades onward as it was seen as one way of overpowering foes. Hence Quisara's conversion to Christianity in order to marry Armusia at the end of The Island Princess is an example of a literary staple as the beautiful infidel recognizes the errors of her religion and embraces Christianity: "I do embrace your faith sir, and your fortune" (5.2.121). It is also comically invoked in the romance between Pyniero and Panura, Quisara's waiting-woman: "Panura, / If thou wilt give me leave, Ile get thee with Christian, / The best way to convert thee" (5.4. [13][14][15].

But, as with the text's doubts concerning European superiority over native inhabitants, Quisara's conversion is also represented in a subtly ambiguous manner. Her religious affiliation is consistently revealed to be subservient to her erotic desires. In the first act, she allows Ruy Dias to believe that she would be prepared to convert to Christianity in order to encourage him to undertake the love-test of rescuing her brother. Similarly, when in act 4, scene 2 the governor, in disguise as a Moorish priest, encourages Quisara to convert Armusia to Islam/Sun and Moon worship (the text implies both) as a condition of the marriage, he does so by appealing to her vanity concerning her beauty and the influence she believes it can exert on her suitors: "You are a Saint esteem'd here for your beauty, / And many a longing heart." (147-48): "Use it discreetly [. . .] fairely bring 'em home to our devotions, / Which will be blessed, and for which, you sainted" (153-66). The governor's repetition of the idea that Quisara's successful conversion of Armusia would accord her beatific status is designed to appeal to her sense of selfimportance, and it is well aimed since Quisara is easily seduced by the notion that the Gods need her "helpe" (154) and the "miracle" that her "heavenly forme" must "worke" (160-61) on the Portuguese. It is status that Quisara seeks through religion rather than the possession of a stable faith, a fact that is soon revealed in The Island Princess. When Armusia expresses horror at the thought of conversion to her "devillish" religion (4.5.136), and she is in danger of losing her admirer, Quisara's faith collapses and she soon converts to Christianity. The audience is encouraged to have little faith in the integrity of her conversion since it soon becomes apparent that it is being used to provide yet another dramatic role for her, that of Virgin martyr: "Keepe on your way, a virgin will assist ye, / A virgin won by youre faire constancy, / And glorying that she is won so, will dye by ye" (5.2.105-10).

Though the tragedy of such martyrdom is avoided because the governor is unmasked and his machinations revealed, the cultural harmony that the prospective nuptials between Armusia and Quisara represent does not suggest a secure basis on which to build either a colony's or a nation's future. In the play, the Portuguese have triumphed only superficially, since the audience-aware of Quisara's vanity and autocratic behavior and Armusia's deep-seated hostility to her culture-can have small faith in a harmonious future for either their relationship or any dynastic and national alliances that are built upon it. Hence, when Quisara attempts to persuade Armusia to convert to her religion, his reaction is violent in the extreme: I hate and curse ye, Contemne your deities, spurne at their powers, And where I meet your maumet Gods, I'le swing 'em Thus o're my head, and kick 'em into puddles, Nay I will out of vengeance search your Temples, And with those hearts that serve my God, demolish Your shambles of wild worships. (4.5.112-18) Under pressure, Armusia's knee-jerk reaction is to threaten violent vengeance and cultural annihilation. Furthermore, Quisara's apostasy is motivated solely by the strength of her erotic desires, which, given the superficiality of these feelings, hardly suggests that cultural harmony is secure. Quisara may assert that whichever way Armusia will go she "must follow necessary," sharing "One life, and one death" (5.5.41-42), and Armusia may apologize for his "rashnesse" to the king and the other indigenous rulers: "for I was agrie, / And out of that might utter some distemper, / Think not 'tis my nature" (5.5.72-75). Yet, in another crisis it is by no means clear that a peaceful understanding between colonizer and colonized would or could be maintained. Quisara, the island princess, as an unmarried woman/virgin territory/heir to a throne, is tempting bait for the Portuguese colonialists. But the audience is encouraged to see the "peace" that the king proclaims at the end of the play as more to be hoped for than certainly achieved, particularly as he himself remains only "half-converted" to Portuguese values. 15 In the relationship between colonizer and colonized there will be (potentially insuperable) barriers that put the dynastic and national alliance under severe strain. In other words, in Quisara's conversion, The Island Princess conforms to orthodox views of the superiority of the Christian religion over indigenous beliefs and practices. Indeed the precise nature of the Spice Islanders' religion appears of little concern. As previously described the governor of Ternata appears disguised as a "Moore Priest" (apparently a Muslim) (4.1 s.d.) and later as a worshiper of "the Sun and Moone" (4.5.70). This confusion may be indicative of the text's lack of interest in native practices, or it may represent a desire to undermine the standing and constancy of Moluccan religious beliefs. Hence the play seems rather uncertain over its prognosis for long-term religious harmony as continuing differences between the Portuguese and the Tidoreans mean that future conflict and misunderstanding must remain likely.