justly merited, for, though blended with the manners of a Gothic age, it is certainly both pathetic and interesting.
Mrs. Ford, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, speaking of Falstaff's proposals, says, that his disposition and his words "do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundredth psalm to the tune of Green Sleeves."[577:A] This seems to have been a very popular song about 1580, for it is licensed several times during this year, and entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, under the titles of "A newe northerne dittye of the Lady Green Sleeves," and "A new Northern Song of Green Sleeves, beginning
"The bonniest lass in all the land."
It is mentioned by Beaumont and Fletcher in The Loyal Subject, but is supposed to be now no longer extant.
In the same play, Falstaff alludes to another old song, which was entitled Fortune my foe[577:B], enumerating all the misfortunes incident to mankind through the instability of fortune. Of this ballad, which is mentioned by Brewer in his Lingua[577:C], twice by Beaumont and Fletcher[577:D], and by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy[577:E], the tune is said to be the identical air now known by the song of "Death and the Lady;" and the first stanza, observes Mr. Malone, was as follows:—
"Fortune, my foe, why dost thou frown on me?
And will my fortune never better be?
Wilt thou, I say, for ever breed my pain,
And wilt thou not restore my joys again?"[577:F]
Sir Hugh Evans, in the first scene of the third act of this[577:G] play, quotes, though from his trepidation very inaccurately, four lines from