Greensleeves

Composer: ASHMORE, Lawrence
  • The folk tune “Greensleeves” is as at least as old as 1580, when it was published as in broadside ballads (inexpensive single-song sheet music) in London.1
  • Shakespeare refers to “Greensleeves” in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597), indicating the tune was already well known by then. 

“Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of ‘Green Sleeves’”

Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor V.v.7

Sources

  1. Frank Kidson and Mary Neal, English Folk-Song and Dance, Cambridge University Press (1915), 26.

Cut IDs

42795