Montezeuma and Cortez are the historical heroes; Almeria, daughter of the Indian Queen, is the vengeful passionate heroine; Cydaria, daughter of Montezeuma, is the angelic heroine. Montezeuma's sons, Odmar and Guyomar, Almeria's sister, Alibech, and her brother, Orbellan, all in love with some one, add to the criss-crossing of affections. Almeria is loved by Montezeuma, but loves Cortez, who does not love her. Cydaria is loved by Cortez and also by Orbellan. The two heroines, as well as the two heroes, are thus rivals, and the vengeful one directs the intrigue. The brothers Odmar and Guyomar, to say nothing of a Spanish captain, both love Alibech, and provide the usual story of fraternal rivalry. After duels, captures, imprisonments, conflicts of honor, renunciations, and jealousies, finally the vengeful heroine succumbs. One of the brothers is preserved for Alibech; Cortez weds the angelic heroine; the rest, including six of the leading actors and several supernumeraries, are killed or commit suicide.
Dryden's dedication of "The Rival Ladies" to the Earl of Orrery gives some support to the latter's claim to have been the introducer of the rhymed heroic species, though his first play acted was probably "Henry V," in 1664. Whoever the originators, their example was soon followed by Crowne, Lee, Settle, Otway, and most of the dramatists of the day; and for fifteen years or so English efforts in tragedy were confined to the heroic model.
The use of the heroic couplet was its distinguishing mark; of course, an imitation of French practice. The plots, too, were direct borrowings, or close imitations, of contemporary French romances or dramas. Moreover, the themes and their treatment, the conception of honor, the importance given to love, and the pseudo-history, all followed French ideas. The unities were attended to, if not strictly observed; incidents, persons, and scenes greatly reduced in number in comparison with Elizabethan practice; and fixed rules of propriety in characterization and language observed, all in French fashion.
The English plays, however, formed a type unknown in France or anywhere else on sea or land. The plots of all the "Sieges," "Rivals," and "Conquests" are mainly concerned with love, which inspires heroic sentiment and valor, encounters much jealousy and intrigue, runs counter to friendship and honor, and works its sorrows and joys among persons illustrious in history. In the end, the hero, a man of prodigious valor and most exemplary honor, weds the heroine, who is equally skilled in the artificial code of honor, while the deaths of the ambitious villain and the evil princess, in love with the hero and seeking revenge on the heroine, provide a tragic catastrophe. The persons are usually historical, English, Classical, or Eastern, and a little historical fact was intended to give a kind of grandeur to the story. The Alexanders and Montezumas, however, have manners and sentiments drawn partly from the courts of Louis and Charles and partly from the world of romance. The curious conception of honor as superhuman valor and magnanimity combined with formal propriety leads to impossibilities like those in a child's book of wonders. Duels and rescues take the place of pitched fields; the valorous champion puts to rout an army, exchanges compliments and courtesies with the grace of a fashion-plate, boasts and rants in Cambyses' vein, and is near to expire in an ecstasy of declamation when the heroine extends her hand for him to kiss. The two rival lovers and the two rival ladies generally play their game of jealousy, ambition, and wounded honor during a conquest or a siege; but world and empire count for naught. _Amor vincit omnia._