All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare.  First performed in 1602 or 1603.  In Shakespeare's play, Helena is in love with Betram, who she believes to be far above her station.  She compares her love for him to the mistaken worship of an "Indian," who pays homage to the sun.  Many non-fiction accounts by Spanish explorers identified South and Central Americans as sun-worshippers.  These accounts caused some Europeans to assume that all American natives worshipped the sun.  The term "Indian" applied to both people from India and people from the Americas in the literature of the period.

The Antipodes by Richard Brome.  First performed in 1638.  In Brome's play, Peregrine goes insane from a frustrated desire to travel and from reading too much travel literature, which testifies to the abundance of this type of literature available during the period.

Bartholomew Fair by Ben Jonson.  First performed in 1614.  The play, which takes place in London's Smithfield and satirizes a number of archetypal London characters, includes a passing reference to Virginia in the Induction.

The City Madam by Phillip Massinger.  First performed in 1632.  Sir John and his followers disguise themselves as "Indians" from Virginia to teach his wife and daughters a lesson about aspiring above their stations.  Issues of class often come up in conjunction with discussions of the New World in the literature of this period.  Some sources see the New World as a potential classless Utopia (as in Gonzalo's vision of the island in The Tempest).  Other sources depict it as a place where the order provided by class distinctions dissolves into chaos.

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare.  First performed in 1594 or 1595.  Shakespeare's comedy of two pairs of long-lost twins contains a reference to "America, the Indies," in a scene where Dromio compares different regions of a woman's body to different areas of the world.  The description of America that Dromio offers reflects reports of the riches that Spanish explorers found in South America.

Eastward, Ho! by Ben Jonson, John Marston, and George Chapman.  First performed in 1605. Like City Madam, this much earlier play conflates issues of class and rank with the idea of travel to the New World.  Sir Petronel Flash, a fortuneless nobleman, marries the daughter of a wealthy merchant and plans to steal her dowry and flee to Virginia.  The play also includes a lengthy discussion by a group of sailors about the riches to be found in Virginia and the ideal society being constructed there.

Henry the Fifth Among the most-performed of the history plays, Henry V tells the story of young prince Hal as he makes the transition from wild young man into serious king, and conquers parts of France.  This play is a gold mine for any one studying language in Shakespeare’Äôs day, because it features many characters, like Fluellen and Princess Katherine, who speak with heavy accents.

A King and No King This play focuses largely on a young king who returns from a war to find that he has fallen head over heels in love with his sister, who returns his affection.  His friend and fellow soldier Bessus provides the comic subplot by picking fights with local pugilists and bragging about his military prowess.

The Island Princess by John Fletcher.  First performed in 1621. The action of the play takes place in the Molucca or Spice Islands in Indonesia.  At the time that the play was written, the English East Indies Company had aspirations of challenging the Dutch and Portuguese for trade in this area of the world.  The historical events in the play actually took place in the 1580s, and involved conflict between Portuguese and Dutch colonists.  The play is important because colonized natives have significant onstage roles.  Although it has a specific historical and geographic location, The Island Princess also shows the influence of the English popular conception of the New World, and of colonization in general.   The native princess Quisara is a sort of natural Christian, inspired to convert by the example of Armusia, the Portuguese colonist prepared to die for his faith.  Not only does Quisara attempt to save Armusia's life, she converts to Christianity out of love for him.  Her story has certain similarities to the stories of Pocahontas which had traveled to London from Virginia.  The play also contains the stereotype of the subtle, conniving native in its depiction of the Governor of Ternata.

Love's Labour's Lost In this early comedy, Shakespeare obsesses about language.  A prince and three of his friends take an oath to study, to fast one day of the week, to sleep little, and party less, and most importantly, to see no women.  Of course, the next day, a princess and three of her ladies-in-waiting show up with an important message from the King of France.  The prince and his friends face a terrible choice: be forsworn or let these lovely ladies go away un-wooed.  Among the scholar-prince's court is the pedant Holofernes, who is a clear parody of the pedants and language-regulators of Shakespeare's time.

The Memorable Masque by George Chapman.  Performed in 1613 for the King's daughter's wedding celebration.  At least some of the action of this masque appears to take place in Virginia, although given the emphasis on material riches and gold, and the depiction of the "Virginian priests" as sun worshippers, Chapman may have conflated Virginia with descriptions of Central and South America.  The masque focuses heavily on the colonization of Virginia as a missionary enterprise, showing that the colonists bring the enlightenment of Christianity to the ignorant Americans.

Poetaster Written as Jonson’Äôs largest and most viscous bookend to the ’ÄúPoet’Äôs War,’Äù a series of plays in which playwrights attacked each other’Äôs works, habits, and pretentions, Poetaster is a battle of wits, in which Jonson casts himself as the famous poet Horace, and gets theatrical revenge on some recognizable satires of his fellow playwrights.  The title itself, incidentally, is a Jonsonian coinage.  The title of the play is the first recorded appearance of this word in print.

The Roaring Girl To make his father accept his desired bride, a young gentleman pretends to be in love with Moll Flanders, the infamous ’Äúroaring girl’Äù of London.  Unfortunately for him, Moll has other plans’Äîand other suitors.

The Sea Voyage by John Fletcher (and Phillip Massinger?).  First performed in 1622. The play takes place in an indeterminate New World location.  The fictional islands seem to be within the Portuguese sphere of influence and so might be somewhere off the coast of Brazil.  The play's plot involves potential colonists driven by famine to contemplate cannibalism, and a group of Portuguese women turned Amazons who practice human sacrifice.  Fletcher inverts the savagery which contemporary travel narratives typically attributed to natives of the Americas, and shows Europeans "turned savage."  The play also parodies fortuneless noblemen who become colonists in order to chase after the riches they imagine they will find in the New World.  Like Shakespeare's The Tempest, this play draws on narrative accounts of the wreck of the Sea Venture.

The Staple of News by Ben Jonson.  First performed in 1626.  In this play about the Princess of the Mines visiting London, Jonson makes reference to Pocahontas, another strange princess who visited London in 1617.  Jonson actually met Pocahontas when she attended a performance of his Christmas his Masque as a guest of King James.  John Rolfe and John Smith both wrote letters concerning Pocahontas' visit which demonstrate one version of the "noble savage" archetype - the colonized native who is a sort of natural Christian.  The Virginia Company brought Pocahontas to London as a success story, a Native American woman who, according to the Company's official literature, voluntarily and spontaneously decided to convert to Christianity, inspired by her love for the devoutly Christian Rolfe.  By the time she arrived in London, Pocahontas and her father Powhatan were probably the most famous Native American characters in English popular imagination, having appeared in many of the travel narratives written by Virginia colonists.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare.  First performed in 1611.  Shakespeare used narratives of the wreck of the Sea Venture en route to Virginia as some of his primary sources for the play.  He also drew on Montaigne's "Of the Cannibals," written about the societal structures of Native Americans, a work which forms the basis for Gonzalo's idealization of the Island.  The Tempest brings up many of the issues of colonization.  The idea that Caliban is Shakespeare's Native American character is now commonplace.  However the play also includes depictions of colonizers which were typical at the time it was written.  Sebastian and Antonio are power hungry, corrupt nobles who aspire to climb higher and see their arrival on the island as the means to do so.  Stephano and Trinculo are incompetent servants with delusions of grandeur, their delusions fed by the blank slate of their "new world."

The Travels of the Three English Brothers by John Day, Williams, and William Rowley.  First performed in 1607.  Day based his play on a pamphlet called The Three English Brothers, which recounted the journeys of the Sherley brothers.  While the play takes actual events in the Sherley's lives as its bwasis, it has multiple thematic parallels to contemporary accounts of the New World.  For example, both Muslim and Jewish characters talk about wanting to practice cannibalism, a practice typically associated in travel narratives with New World "savages." 

Twelfth Night The lovely Olivia is in mourning for her dead brother, and refuses to see the Duke Orsino, who is sick with love for her.  Viola, shipwrecked on the shores of Orsino’Äôs province, disguises herself as a boy, and enters the Duke’Äôs service.  Orsino sends her to woo Olivia in his stead, and Olivia falls madly in love with the beautiful boy’Äîwho is really girl.  Olivia is also enduring the affections of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a clumsy wooer who will take tips from anyone, most especially the competent Viola.

The White Devil In this revenge tragedy, Vittoria Corombona has a torrid affair with the Duke of Brachiano.  Both of them are married to other people.  The innocent spouses suffer’ÄîBracchiano’Äôs wife is poisoned and Bracchiano’Äôs brother, Flamineo, murders Vittoria’Äôs husband.  For his murder, Vittoria, her brother, and Flamineo stand trial.  Vittoria is found guilty of adultery, but not murder.  The men are acquitted.