This is one of Ophelia's songs in Hamlet. It is found in several of the ballad operas, such as The Cobblers’ Opera (1729), The Quakers’ Opera (1728), &c., under this name. In Pills to purge Melancholy (1707, ii. 44) it is printed to a song in Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece, beginning, “Arise, arise, my juggy, my puggy.” Other versions will be found under the names of “Who list to lead a soldier’s life,” and “Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor.” See pages 144 and 145.
Green Sleeves, or Which nobody can deny, has been a favorite tune, from the time of Elizabeth to the present day; and is still frequently to be heard in the streets of London to songs with the old burden, “Which nobody can deny.” It will also be recognised as the air of Christmas comes but once a year, and many another merry ditty.
“And set our credits to the tune of Greene Sleeves.”—The Loyal Subject, by Beaumont and Fletcher.
Falstaff.—“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.” (Embracing her.)—Merry Wives of Windsor, act v., sc. 5.
“Mrs. Ford.—“I shall think the worse of fat men, as long as I have an eye to make difference of men’s liking. And yet he would not swear; praised women’s modesty and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness, that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words: but they do no more adhere and keep pace together, than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves.”—Merry Wives of Windsor, act ii., sc. 1.
The earliest mention of the ballad of Green Sleeves in the Registers of the Stationers’ Company is in September, 1580, when Richard Jones had licensed to him, “A new Northern Dittye of the Lady Greene Sleeves.” The date of the entry, however, is not always the date of the ballad; and this had evidently attained some popularity before that time, because on the same day Edward
