The Emperor of the Moon is a Restoration farce written by Aphra Behn in 1687, based on Italian commedia dell'arte.
It was Behn's second most successful play (after The Rover), probably due to the lightness of the plot and its accompanying musical and spectacular entertainment.
The original cast included Cave Underhill as Dr Baliardo, Anthony Leigh as Scaramouch, Thomas Jevon as Harlequin, Sarah Cooke as Elvira and Katherine Corey as Mopsophil.
The gullible Baliardo receives these otherworldly suitors, and so the stage is set for the grand finale: a masque-like pageant that the schemers perform in an abandoned building.
[2] However, Al Coppola suggests that Behn in fact lampoons the enthusiastic but credulous Baliardo 'only to direct the audience's own untrustworthy gaze toward the threat posed by enthusiasm to domestic and civil harmony; toward the debased condition of the theatre; and, above all, toward the irrational credulity stoked by Whig politics during the Exclusion Crisis, which the Court faction had inadvisably embraced during James's reign'.