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