Greensleeves
Encyclopedia
Folk music of England
Folk music of England refers to various types of traditionally based music, often contrasted with courtly, classical and later commercial music, for which evidence exists from the later medieval period. It has been preserved and transmitted orally, through print and later through recordings...
and tune, a ground of the form called a romanesca
Romanesca
Romanesca was a song form popular in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. It was most popular with Italian composers of the early Baroque period...
.
A broadside ballad
Broadside (music)
A broadside is a single sheet of cheap paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations...
by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company
Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers
The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Stationers' Company was founded in 1403; it received a Royal Charter in 1557...
in September 1580 as "A New Northern Dittye of the Lady Greene Sleeves". It then 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."
The tune is found in several late 16th century and early 17th century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius
Het Luitboek van Thysius
Het Luitboek van Thysius is a book of music for the lute. It was written by Adriaen Smout from Rotterdam, who started at the University of Leiden in 1595 and later became a notable counter-Reformation preacher...
, as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Cambridge University
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
libraries
Seeley Historical Library
The Seeley Historical Library is the history library of the University of Cambridge, England. It is housed within the History Faculty building on the Sidgwick Site off West Road, Cambridge. Since October 2003, incoming books have been classified according to the Library of Congress scheme; before...
.
Henry VIII
There is a persistent belief that Greensleeves was composed by Henry VIIIHenry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
for his lover and future queen consort
Queen consort
A queen consort is the wife of a reigning king. A queen consort usually shares her husband's rank and holds the feminine equivalent of the king's monarchical titles. Historically, queens consort do not share the king regnant's political and military powers. Most queens in history were queens consort...
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn
Anne Boleyn ;c.1501/1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the...
. Boleyn allegedly rejected King Henry's attempts to seduce her and this rejection may be referred to in the song when the writer's love "cast me off discourteously". However, Henry did not compose "Greensleeves", which is probably Elizabethan in origin and is based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after his death.
Lyrical interpretation
One possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostituteProstitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
. At the time, the word "green" had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase "a green gown", a reference to the way that grass stains might be seen on a woman's dress if she had engaged in sexual intercourse out-of-doors.
An alternative explanation is that Lady Green Sleeves was, through her costume, incorrectly assumed to be immoral. Her "discourteous" rejection of the singer's advances supports the contention that she is not.
In Nevill Coghill
Nevill Coghill
Nevill Coghill was a British literary scholar, known especially for his modern English version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.-Life:...
's translation of The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
, he explains that "green [for Chaucer’s
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
age] was the colour of lightness in love. This is echoed in 'Greensleeves is my delight' and elsewhere."
Alternative lyrics
"What Child Is This?What Child Is This?
"What Child Is This?" is a popular Christmas carol written in 1865. At the age of twenty-nine, English writer William Chatterton Dix was struck with a sudden near-fatal illness and confined to bedrest for several months, during which he went into a deep depression...
" is a popular Christmas carol
Christmas carol
A Christmas carol is a carol whose lyrics are on the theme of Christmas or the winter season in general and which are traditionally sung in the period before Christmas.-History:...
written in 1865 by William Chatterton Dix, set to the "Greensleeves" tune.
A variation was used extensively in the 1962 film How the West Was Won
How the West Was Won (film)
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film. The picture was one of the last "old-fashioned" epic films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to enjoy great success. It follows four generations of a family as they move ever westward, from western New York state to the Pacific Ocean...
as the song "Home in the Meadow", lyrics by Sammy Cahn
Sammy Cahn
Sammy Cahn was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area...
, performed by Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds
Debbie Reynolds is an American actress, singer, and dancer.She was initially signed at age 16 by Warner Bros., but her career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave her a small, but significant part in the film Three Little Words , then signed her to...
.
Early literary references
In Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of WindsorThe Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
, written around 1602, the character Mistress Ford refers twice without any explanation to the tune of "Greensleeves" and Falstaff
Falstaff
Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
later exclaims:
- Let the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of 'Greensleeves'!
These allusions indicate that the song was already well known at that time.
Media
The earliest known source of the tune (Trinity College, Dublin ms. D. I. 21, c. 1580 - known as "William Ballet's lute book") gives the tune in the melodic minor scale. "Greensleeves" is also often played in a natural minor scale and sometimes in the Dorian modeDorian mode
Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...
.
Other uses
Act 2 Scene 1 of Ferruccio BusoniFerruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
's opera Turandot
Turandot (Busoni)
Turandot is a 1917 opera with spoken dialogue and in two acts by Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni prepared his own libretto, in German, based on the play by Count Carlo Gozzi. The music for Busoni's opera is based on incidental music, and the associated Turandot Suite , which Busoni had written in 1905...
opens with the tune.
Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
's Second Suite in F for Military Band
Second Suite in F for Military Band
The Second Suite in F for Military Band is Gustav Holst's second and last suite for concert band. Although performed less frequently than the First Suite in E-flat, it is still a staple of the band literature...
incorporates the tune in its final movement; he used the same music, slightly re-scored, in the final movement of his St Paul's Suite
St Paul's Suite
St Paul's Suite originally titled Suite in C, is a composition for string orchestra by the English composer Gustav Holst. It was written in 1912, but due to revisions wasn't published until 1922. It is named after the St Paul's Girls' School in the United Kingdom, where Holst was Director of Music...
.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
(1872-1958) composed an orchestral piece in 1934 entitled Fantasia on "Greensleeves", in which the tune of Greensleeves alternates with that of Lovely Joan
Lovely Joan
Lovely Joan is a traditional English folk song , and the tune to which it is sung. Its melody is most familiar to modern audiences as the counterpoint tune used in British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on "Greensleeves".-Lyrics:...
.
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...
's well-known song "Amsterdam" is a modified version of the tune.
On Jazz singer Beverly Kenney
Beverly Kenney
Beverly Kenney was an American jazz singer.-Biography:Kenney worked early in life for Western Union as a telephone birthday singer...
's 1956 LP Beverly Kenney Sings For Johnny Smith, I'll Know My Love is based on the song's tune.
Alfred Reed
Alfred Reed
Alfred Reed was one of North America's most prolific and frequently performed composers, with more than two hundred published works for concert band, wind ensemble, orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensemble to his name...
arranged the tune for orchestra in 1962. Then, in 1986, he revised his previous arrangement, and arranged the piece for concert band, and then again in 1993. Alfred Reed's 1993 piece 'Greensleeves' is played by many concert bands worldwide, as well as many school bands.
Steve Lukather
Steve Lukather
Steve "Luke" Lukather is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger, and record producer best known for his work with the rock band Toto. Lukather has played with many artists, released several solo albums, and worked as a composer, arranger, and session guitarist on more than 1,500 albums...
covered the song in his Santamental
Santamental
-History:When Lukather's record company, Bop City Records, approached him about recording a Christmas album, he quipped, "Why me? Do I look like Father Christmas to you mofos?" The company wanted him to do the record knowing he would approach the project with a unique angle and produce something...
album.
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
's song "Leaving Greensleeves" (1974) is another modified version of the tune.
Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Lee Carlton is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Upon completion of her education at the School of American Ballet, Carlton chose to pursue singing instead, performing in New York bars and clubs while attending university. Three months after recording a demo with producer Peter...
covered the song for Christmas time.
Loreena McKennitt
Loreena McKennitt
Loreena Isabel Irene McKennitt, CM, OM, is a Canadian singer, composer, harpist, accordionist and pianist who writes, records and performs world music with Celtic and Middle Eastern themes. McKennitt is known for her refined, clear soprano vocals...
also covered the song for her album The Visit (1991).
Saxophonist John Coltrane
John Coltrane
John William Coltrane was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and later was at the forefront of free jazz...
performed a jazz arrangement of "Greensleeves" on his album Africa/Brass
Africa/Brass
-Personnel:* John Coltrane — soprano and tenor saxophone* Booker Little — trumpet* Freddie Hubbard — trumpet on May 23 session only* Britt Woodman — trombone on June 4 session only* Charles Greenlee — euphonium on May 23 session only...
.
Greensleeves has often been used in television and radio media as accompaniment. One obscure example is in an episode of the British comedy Grace & Favour
Grace & Favour
Grace & Favour is a British sitcom sequel to the long-running series Are You Being Served? It aired on BBC1 for two series from 1992 to 1993 and marked the return of Are You Being Served? creators and writers Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft.-History:The idea of a spinoff was originally suggested by...
, where it was used as an introduction to a Shakespearean quote.