The Emperor of the Moon
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"The Emperor of the Moon" is an English country dance in cut time and G Minor.<br> The parts are played AABB.<br> The country dance version of the melody was first published by John Playford's son, Henry<br> Playford (1657-1709), in his Dancing Master, 8th edition (1690) and appeared in subsequent<br> editions of that work through the 18th and final edition of 1728 (then published by<br> John Young). Henry also included it in the 7th edition of his First Book of Apollo's Banquet<br> (1793). It was also printed in the Walsh's Compleat Country Dancing Master (1718) and in later<br> editions of 1731 and 1754. The melody was included by London<br> musician Thomas Hammersley in his music manuscript collection dated 1790.<br> The title of the dance and tune is taken from the play Emperor of the Moon by Aphra Behn<br> (1640-1689), the first professional English woman playwright, produced at Duke's Theatre<br> in 1687. It was a Restoration era farce based on Nolant de Fatouvill's original<br> Arlequin, empereur dans la lune (1684), both highly influenced by the Italian commedia dell'arte.<br> Behn's play itself calls for several unnamed dances, "figure dance", "Antic dance" and a<br> dance described as "very Antick".<br> Researcher Graham Christian (2015) finds the tune to be the composition of musician and<br> dancing master Richard Motley (fl. 1688-1710), first printed in an appedix to the second volume<br> of Vinculum Societatis (1688). Henry Purcell revised and corrected it, writes Christian, for its<br> inclusion in Playford's Second Part of Musick's Handmaid (1689).<br> It was also printed in<br> Barlow's The Complete Country Dance Tunes from Playford's Dancing Master (1985) and<br> Christian's A Playford Assembly (2015).<br>
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