This poem eulogizes John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester. Like many traditional eulogies it makes repeated allusions to classical Greek mythology, substituting "Strephon" for the name of Wilmot. This itself is an allusion, because Strephon is a name taken from pastoral poetry as the name of an amorous young man, frequently a shepherd, who is wooing a woman he loves. Using the name "Strephon" to represent Wilmot presents him in a highly idealized way, as an innocent and well-meaning young man. Thus, Aphra Behn acknowledges Wilmot's status as one of the most scandalous libertine seducers in England without dwelling on the seamier aspects of his reputation.
The 85-line poem is not broken into stanzas, and is mostly iambic pentameter couplets. The injunction "mourn, mourn" appears as a motif, as Behn invokes the different groups of people (or gods) affected by Wilmot's death. These begin with the Muses: nine mythical daughters of Zeus by the goddess Mnemosyne of memory. Instead of invoking the Muses, as was customary at the beginning of epic poetry, Behn encourages them to mourn Wilmot as a person whose wit and beauty she describes as "godlike". Instead of pleading with the Muses for inspiration, she identifies Wilmot as an earthly source of inspiration, indicating that his gifts were beyond what mere mortals generally possessed. With him dead-- Behn suggests-- satire has lost its sting. Yet presenting Wilmot as a source of inspiration is quite accurate. Wilmot mentored the actresses Nell Gwyn and Elizabeth Barry, helping Nell to secure her fortune as one of the mistresses of the King. He helped launch Barry's extremely successful career as the most famous tragic actress of her age, enabling her to earn a living solely through acting, despite her mediocre looks, her increasing age (her career lasted 35 years), and the gigantic gap between her rate of pay and that of her male co-stars (a tradition maintained in modern cinema to this day).
Behn's segue into her second group of people she instructs to "mourn, mourn" is so smooth that it proceeds naturally from the observation that satire has lost its sting. The "fop" and "cully"-- that is to say, misbehaving, pretentious young men of the Court whom Wilmot routinely mocked-- now have nobody to correct their inappropriate behavior. (This point is quite ironic, given that in his time Wilmot himself was one of the greatest libertines of all.) Behn presents Wilmot as having provided positive, beneficial guidance by using his gifts of satire to correct the most egregious deficits of character whenever he saw them. This is an impressive piece of spin-doctoring, because many of Wilmot's contemporaries considered him not a "reproacher" of vice but one of its chief instigators.
The third group of people Behn instructs to mourn are the "beauties": women Rochester courted, seduced, and played with, who have lost one of their chief admirers. She instructs them to recall his physical gifts, which included a charming demeanor and a handsome face and body. She presents Wilmot as a "triumph" of the women's "victories"-- he died of complications related to venereal disease at age 33. Instead of presenting him as someone responsible for spreading syphilis and gonorrhea, as he could not have helped but do, she presents him as a victim of all the beautiful women Wilmot worshipped.
Next, Behn returns her attention to the semi-divine "little gods", specifically the multiple manifestations of Eros (known as "Cupid" to the Romans) who shoot human victims with the arrows of love. They have, after all, lost their chief servant and worshipper. From here, Behn segues smoothly into a discussion of the Roman empire, and how well Rochester would have been received had he been born in that time. This is a subtle criticism of how King Charles II alternately favored and spurned Rochester, treating him as a beloved member of his inner circle until Rochester's offensive and disrespectful antics became too much, beginning at age 18 when he was sentenced to three months in the Tower of London for attempting to abduct a young, nubile heiress.
Interestingly, Behn does not mention Rochester's actual heroic acts, which included naval service in the Second Dutch War, where he served under Edward Montagu, the 1st Earl of Sandwich. (No, not the card player who popularized meat between two slices of bread-- that was John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Edward Montagu, who was the first of his family to receive an earldom, was a war hero.) This omission may have been part of an attempt to avoid the scandal attached to the Earl, who allowed his men to plunder the holds of captured prize ships after having been explicitly ordered not to do so.
This eulogy is an adroit rewriting of recent history that emphasizes the late John Wilmot's good attributes while neatly reframing the behaviors or traits for which he was criticized.
