[Not for distribution; comments welcome. 12 June 2000.]

Aphra Behn's Young Jemmy: OR, The Princely Shepherd
Francis F. Steen, University of California at Santa Barbara
For a proposed collection, Early Women Writing, edited by Helen Ostovich
Dept. of English, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1

See the full ballad text on the Restoration Print Culture site.

This illustrated blackletter ballad was hawked in the streets of London some time between April and October 1681. Like most ballads, it was anonymous; in this case, we can confidently attribute it to Aphra Behn, one of the most prominent playwrights of the Restoration and an ardent supporter of the Duke of York, the future James II. Four of the stanzas were shortly after published in Ephelia’s Female Poems on Several Occasions (131-33; cf. this volume), in Playford’s Wit and Mirth (98), and in Behn’s own Poems Upon Several Occasions. Its ostensible theme is the declining fortunes of a pastoral charmer. A contemporary audience, however, would have recognized it as a clever piece of political propaganda. Designed to discredit the King’s firstborn but illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth, popularly known as Young Jemmy, and his Whig political allies, it was likely sponsored by Charles II’s Tory administration.

Ballads were the sensationalist tabloids of the time, recounting stories of murder, betrayal, and love, of battles and coronations. Selling for a penny or less – the price of a beer – they were sung in the streets, in coffee houses, and in company around the fire. Because they appealed directly to basic human interests, their potential audiences were much larger than that of closely reasoned political tracts. They represented an attractive tradition that allowed Behn to cast the complex political situation at the time into the appealing mold of a simple country life with transparent emotions and motivations.

Young Jemmy relates the story of a "Princely shepherd" who lives happily in a Classical Arcadia. Like the real Young Jemmy, he is handsome, an excellent dancer, and adored by the "fair nymphs." His mien is as divine as any Greek god "that ever fancied was." When "expectations high" lured him from his idyllic rural pastimes, "the streams / ran hoarse, as if with mourning," as they did at the death of Orpheus, the mythical Greek poet and musician (cf. Ovid’s Metamorphoses). It is his kind and courteous nature that exposed him to unscrupulous individuals; "By flattering Fools and Knaves betray'd," he is "led to ruin."

The archaic setting of the ballad world thinly veils the timeliness of the theme. In 1679, the aging Charles II fell ill, raising concerns about the succession. Since he had no legitimate children, his brother James, Duke of York, was next in line to the throne. A sizable majority in Parliament fretted that York, who had converted to Catholicism, would favor an absolutist form of government along the lines of Louis XIV’s France and force the reintroduction of that ideological bogeyman, "Popery." Through a series of Parliamentary bills, the Whigs attempted to exclude the King’s brother – inevitably dubbed Old Jemmy – from the royal line. Their leader, the Earl of Shaftesbury, proposed that the crown should instead pass to the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, Young Jemmy. But the King refused; he responded by repeatedly dissolving Parliament, and in the spring of 1681, he moved decisively to crush the opposition (Clifton, 134-5). They could now be ridiculed as the "busie Fops of State;" their effort to make Monmouth king had ended in a humiliating defeat, as the ballad triumphantly observes.

The King’s intransigence, however, radicalized the opposition. The venture that ended badly for Young Jemmy and the Whigs in 1681 led directly to the formulation of the principles behind the Bill of Rights (cf. Locke, Two Treatises) and not long after to the Revolution of 1688.

Behn, Aphra. Poems Upon Several Occasions: With a Voyage To the Island Of Love. By Mrs. A. Behn. London: printed for R. Tonson and J. Tonson, at Grays-Inn-Gate next Gray's-Inn Lane, and at the Judges-Head at Chancery Lane end near Fleetstreet, 1684. ESTC R15250.

Behn, Aphra. Young Jemmy, or, The Princely Shepherd. [London]: Printed for P[hilip]. Brooksby, at the Golden-ball, in West-smithfield, [c. 1681]. ESTC R227506. Originals at Harvard University, Houghton Library, and the British Library.

Clifton, Robin. The Last Popular Rebellion. New York: St. Martin's, 1984.

Ephelia (Joan Philips). Female Poems On Several Occasions. 2nd edition. London: printed for James Courtney, at the Golden Horse Shooe upon Saffron Hill, 1682. ESTC R24055.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. [1690, ESTC R2930]. Edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Laslett. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished by Geo. Sandys. 7^th edition. London: Printed by E.F. for G. Sawbridge et al., 1678. ESTC R31036.

Owen, Susan J. Restoration Theatre and Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Reviewed by Harold Weber (external)

Playford, Henry. Wit and Mirth. An antidote against melancholy. Compounded of ingenious and witty ballads, songs, and catches, and other pleasant and merry poems. 3^rd edition. London: printed by A.G. and J.P. and sold by Henry Playford, near the Temple Church, 1682. ESTC R21659.