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Greensleeves is a traditional English folk song (or tune), basically a ground of the form called a romanesca ; the widely-believed legend is that it was composed by King Henry VIII (1491 - 1547). It likely circulated in manuscript, as most social music did, long before it was printed. A tune by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company in 1580 as "A New Northern Dittye of the Lady Greene Sleeves." No copy of that printing is known. It appears in the surviving A Handful of Pleasant Delights (1584) as "A New Courtly Sonnet of the Lady Green Sleeves. To the new tune of Green sleeves." Whether this suggests that an old tune of "Greensleeves" was in circulation, or which one our familiar tune is, remain mooted.In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, written around 1602, the character Mistress Ford refers twice without any explanation to "the tune of 'Green Sleeves'", but the best known reference, also from The Merry Wives of Windsor, has Falstaff exclaim:
- Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of 'Greensleeves'!
All of these allusions suggest that the song was well known at that time.
"Greensleeves" has inspired a number of derivative works. The British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) composed a Falstaff opera, Sir John in Love (1935), from which Ralph Greaves adapted a Fantasia on "Greensleeves." It slow tempo has inspired modern languishing renditions. The Christmas carol "What Child is This?" by William Chatterton Dix (1837-1865) used the melody of "Greensleeves."
The traditional lyrics of "Greensleeves" as a conventional lover's lament has many versions, often varying simply in the syllabic density. The first printed version begins:
- Alas my loue, ye do me wrong,
- to cast me off discurteously:
- And I haue loued you so long
- Delighting in your companie.
- Greensleeues was all my ioy,
- Greensleeues was my delight:
- Greensleeues was my heart of gold,
- And who but Ladie Greensleeues.
Many versions use updated grammar, or a mix. Here is the same verse in a sparser version:
- Alas, my love, you do me wrong
- To cast me out discourteously,
- For I have loved you for so long,
- Delighting in your company.
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