The Indian Emperour
John Dryden
 In his play, Dryden presents the type of conflict between love and honor that is typical of his serious drama. Montezuma refuses a chance to save his kingdom from conquest, for personal reasons:But of my crown thou too much care dost take; That which I value more, my love's at stake. Cortez takes the opposite course, turning his back on his love for Cydaria to obey the orders of his king, even though he acknowledges that those orders are flawed. Montezuma gets the worst of their conflict; tortured by the Spaniards, he ends the play with his suicide. Dryden wanted to portray Cortez as high-minded and magnanimous; but he also wanted to show the Spaniards as cruel and oppressive. He managed this by the wildly ahistorical recourse of bringing Francisco Pizarro into the play as a subordinate of Cortez, and making Pizarro the villain. Modern critics have studied the play from feminist and anti-colonialist viewpoints. The Indian Emperor by John Dryden