Break her will, and bruise no bone sir”’: Colonial and Sexual Mastery in Fletcher’s The Island Princess

JEMCS 2.1 (Spring/Summer 2002) "Break her will, and bruise no bone sir": Colonial and Sexual Mastery in Fletcher's The Island Princess Ania Loomba Tfie Island Princess, performed at court in 1621 by the King's Men, is the earliest and fullest treatment of the Molucca islands of the Malay Archipelago (also known as the Spice Islands) in English theater.1 Although it is routinely acknowledged that the story is based on a Spanish history of the conquest of the islands, Conquista de las isles Moluccas (1609) by Bartolem? Leonardo de Argensola and a French novel by Le Seigneur de Bellan, L'Histori? du Ruis Dias, et de Quixaire, Princess des Molucas (1615), the Spice Islands were, until recently, considered as littlemore than an exotic backdrop to the plot of a love affair between the princess of one of the islands and a Portuguese sol dier.2 In this essay, I shall examine how the play offers a fantasy of colonial and sexual possession by using the figure of an Eastern princess who converts to Christianity, and also by responding to contemporary writings about the Moluccas. By doing so, it contributes both to the development of mercantile colonial romance in English theater, as well as to a distinct dis course about the Moluccas that evolves during this period. Most of the action of The Island Princess takes place on an island called Tidore, whose king, when the play opens, has been kidnapped by the evil governor of the neighboring island of Ternata (historically Ternate).3 This governor is a suitor to Quisara, sister to the abducted king. So are the rulers of two other islands, Bakam and Siana, and the captain of the Portuguese, Ruy Dias. Quisara is in love with the captain, and announces that she will marry the man who rescues her brother from Ternata. She hopes this will galvanize Ruy Dias into action Loornba 69 and allow him to claim her hand legitimately. But Ruy Dias fails to rise to the occasion, which is seized by another Portuguese gen tleman, Armusia, who has recently arrived in the islands. Armusia rescues the king of Tidore from Ternata by disguising himself as a merchant, setting Ternata on fire and thus distract ing the guards. Quisara is sorely disappointed at Ruy Dias's inability to act, but also reluctant to keep her promise by marry ing Armusia. Armusia has already won the admiration of Ruy Dias's nephew, Pyniero, who acts as a commentator on the action and also briefly pretends to be a suitor to Quisara, promising her that he would aid Ruy Dias's plan to kill Armusia. Ruy Dias and Armusia duel, and the latter first defeats, then pardons the cap tain, who becomes Armusia's admirer and ally. The frustrated governor of Ternata now arrives inTidore disguised as a "Moorish priest" and tries to rouse anti-Portuguese feeling by appealing to the King's (and later Quisara's) religious and nationalist senti ments. Quisara asks Armusia to convert to her religion; not only does he refuse and deliver a resounding critique of her faith, but he also declares that he now finds the lady abhorrent. He is thrown into prison, which further heals the breach between him and his erstwhile rival Ruy Dias. All the Portuguese now act con ceitedly to rescue their compatriot and expose the wicked gover nor. Meanwhile Quisara realizes her true love for Armusia, and she converts to Christianity. The governor's real identity is dis covered, Armusia and the island princess unite, and the play ends as the King seizes Ternata, gives itsmain city and castle over to Pyniero, and announces that he too is "half-persuaded" toward the new faith. While The Island Princess employs many of the stock devices of Renaissance tragicomedy, even so brief a summary indicates that it rests also on tropes that were established or refigured as a result of contemporary European expansion, such as the "res cue" of non-European women by European men, or the infight ing between "native" rulers. Pocahontas, the Amerindian princess who had converted to Christianity and married the colonist John Rolfe in 1614, was the best known real...