Playing an Indian Queen

A racially ambiguous Indian queen and her troop of singing Brachmani priests form the subject of this chapter. It analyzes The Temple of Love , William Davenant's masque for the Stuart queen Henrietta Maria, alongside the thriving new market for curiosities. The first botanical garden opened in London in the early seventeenth century, stocking up on exotic flora. Strange plants and animals also found their way into wonder cabinets across Europe. Simultaneously, treatises and public exhibits “collected” natives, including Indians. Henrietta Maria's appearance in Whitehall as Indamora, Queen of Narsinga, surrounded by strange Indian objects and sects seems to replicate this appetite for Eastern curiosities and allowed her to stage within a courtly space her own alterity as a French princess and a Roman Catholic.