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Blackadder vocabulary

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Greensleeves: tags: [music]

► definition

Definition:

a traditional English folk song and tune [...]

A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer's Company in September 1580, by Richard Jones, as "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves"
[...]
One possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostitute.[6] At the time, the word "green" had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase "a green gown", a reference to the grass stains on a woman's dress from engaging in sexual intercourse outdoors

An alternative explanation is that Lady Green Sleeves was, through her costume, incorrectly assumed to be sexually promiscuous. Her "discourteous" rejection of the singer's advances supports the contention that she is not.

In Nevill Coghill's translation of The Canterbury Tales, he explains that "green [for Chaucer’s age] was the colour of lightness in love. This is echoed in 'Greensleeves is my delight' and elsewhere."

^{text: from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike}
^{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/}

^{painting: by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, photo of painting: by Maris Stella}
^{CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2522302}
^{music: by Paul Arden-Taylor, Carol Holt, public domain}
^{https://musopen.org/music/42996-greensleeves-to-a-ground/}

► uses

Uses:

Mrs Ford: Sir John! art thou there, my deer? my male deer?

Falstaff: My doe with the black scut! Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green Sleeves, hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.

William Shakespeare. The Merry Wives of Windsor

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Queen: Oh, what has happened about Edmund? There is something very odd about someone who spends all his time with a servant.

[cut to romantic interlude with Edmund and "Bob" strolling in the countryside, to the tune of Greensleeves, ...]

BBC. Blackadder, season 2: Bells

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Alas my loue, ye do me wrong,

to cast me off discurteously:

And I haue loued you so long

Delighting in your companie.

Chorus:

Greensleeues was all my ioy,