Exclusion Crisis
"The Emperor of the Moon" has often been seen as one of Behn's more lightweight offerings. 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'.