The Greensleeves Project

With its haunting melody, and the romantic myth that it was written by Henry VIII as a love song for Anne Boleyn, Greensleeves has remained popular over the centuries and, today, is probably the best known of all Tudor songs.

Greensleeves.

There is, however, no proven connection to Henry VIII. Rather, Greensleeves first appeared in September 1580, (some 33 years after his death), and became a hit immediately, with a number of imitations and parodies following.

The earliest surviving text dates from 1584. It’s a long song, with 18 verses, written in a somewhat stalker-like fashion, by a man who showers his would-be beloved with gifts, including a lot of clothes. Put together, these gifts provide us with a rich resource of information on clothing, fabrics, embroidery, and other aspects of material culture.

Interpreting a literary source like this, especially when most people today lack the material literacy of their early modern counterparts, throws up many questions, some of which are only possible to answer through attempting to reconstruct the clothes described in the song. Is the writer being literal, or are the clothes simply a fantasy? Is the answer somewhere in the middle? Given the fact that the first surviving version of the song is from four years after the original was written, has anything changed? Were there more than 18 verses in the original? What might they have looked like? What can this source tell us about clothes and the way they were worn that we might not get from wills and inventories, wardrobe accounts, portraits, or surviving garments?

We have been given the Janet Arnold Award by the Society of Antiquaries of London, and will be working with a team of superb costume historians and practitioners to examine and recreate the items described in the ballad.

Sarah Thursfield will make
kerchers to thy head, that were wrought fine and gallantly

Constance Mackenzie will make
peticotes of the best, the cloth so fine as might be

Juliet Braidwood will make
a smock of silk, both faire and white,
with gold embrodered gorgeously

Dr Serena Dyer will make
a peticote of Sendall right

Ninya Mikhaila will make
a girdle of gold so red, with pearles bedecked sumptuously and
a gown..of the grossie green, with sleeues of Satten hanging by

Sally Pointer will make
crimson stockings all of silk,
with golde all wrought aboue the knee

Mally Ley will make
garters fringed with the golde, And siluer aglets hanging by

Eva Burnett will make
Pumps as white as was the milke

Ivan Day will make
dainties orderly: To cheare thy stomack from all woes

Tamsin Lewis instigated the project

We will be working with Bernadette Banner to create a video of the all of the verses of Greensleeves, and documentary on the whole project. Both of these will show the clothes, accessories and other gifts described in the ballad. Eloise Pennycott will play Lady Greensleeves, and Callum Coates will play her would-be lover. We will be filming at Athelhampton House in 2025.

Other plans for this interdisciplinary project include a book about Greensleeves and early modern clothing in music and song, and a CD With Gold Embroidered Gorgeously for Resonus Classics

In the meantime, our recording of the words and music can be found here on YouTube

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