The Indian Emperour

The Indian Emperour, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, being the Sequel of The Indian Queen is an English Restoration era stage play, a heroic drama written by John Dryden that was first performed in the Spring of 1665. The play has been considered a defining work in the subgenre of heroic drama, in which "rhymed heroic tragedy comes into full being." As its subtitle indicates, the play deals with the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire under Hernán Cortés.

The premiere production was staged by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; it featured Michael Mohun as the Emperor, Charles Hart as Cortez, Edward Kynaston as Guyomar, Nicholas Burt as Vasquez, William Wintershall as Odmar, William Cartwright as the Priest, and Anne Marshall as Almeria. The original production employed a "gorgeously feathered cloak" that Aphra Behn had brought back from Surinam, along with "glorious wreaths for...heads, necks, arms, legs." Dryden spiced his play with crowd-pleasing features, including incantations and conjured spirits, and an elaborate grotto scene with "a Fountain spouting."

On opening night, Dryden had a program distributed to the audience, on the connection between this play and his earlier The Indian Queen (a collaboration with his brother-in-law Sir Robert Howard). When the Duke of Buckingham and his collaborators satirised Dryden in The Rehearsal (1671), they had their Dryden-substitute Bayes say "that he had printed many reams to instill into the audience some conception of his plot."

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