By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ is a song taken from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, and its leafy theme is in keeping with the setting for this romantic comedy, the Forest of Arden. Here’s the text of ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ followed by a […]
Tag: Shakespeare’s Songs
A Short Analysis of the Shakespeare Song ‘Take, Oh Take Those Lips Away’
‘Take, Oh Take Those Lips Away’ is a song from Shakespeare’s ‘problem play’, Measure for Measure. It’s not as famous as some of the Bard’s other songs, but it’s been praised and singled out as among the best of them, notably by the poet A. E. Housman. Here’s the text […]
A Short Analysis of the Shakespeare Song ‘When Daisies Pied’
‘When Daisies Pied and Violets Blue’ is a song from Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost. Although it’s easy, because this is a song, to dismiss its meaning as frivolous or the words as ‘nonsense’, it’s worth stopping to analyse the lyrics of the song and their place in the play […]
A Short Analysis of the Shakespeare Song ‘It Was a Lover and His Lass’
If one phrase above all others sums up Elizabethan song-making, it’s ‘hey nonny nonny’. There’s plenty of hey-nonny-nonnying going on in the song ‘It Was a Lover and His Lass’ from As You Like It; excitingly, copies of the original sheet music (by Thomas Morley) have survived from the early […]