All is Fair in Love and War

In 1673 the playwright John Dryden wrote his account of the 1623 massacre of English soldiers in Amboyna (Maluku, Indonesia), by the Dutch East India Company. The play was produced by The Kings Company theatre the year it was published, and featured a number of well-known actors in the performance at Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre in central London.

Most of the characters are conniving Dutchmen falsely accusing and plotting against the valiant English. Dryden added a love triangle that included a local beauty, Ysabinda. She is betrothed to the English general Towerson, but loved by Harman Jr., the son of the Dutch governor. After the Dutch plot succeeds and Towerson is sentenced to death, he proclaims that the Dutch empire will soon be ruined.