Who Was Greensleeves? An Extraordinary Reconstruction of Her Clothes

[Narrator] This is probably the biggest video we've ever done. There are endless myths about the song. Who is this woman? It's mainly the battle of a man who wants to impress a woman, but she doesn't budge. Whether he's bankrupting himself, whether he can afford it, we don't know.

[Narrator] Over a dozen incredible makers were involved in the interpretation and construction of every piece of this outfit, and we followed them along during the whole making process. (hammer thudding) (uplifting music) ♪ Greensleeves was my heart of gold ♪ ♪ And who but my lady Greensleeves ♪

[Narrator] It's a tune many of us are probably familiar with in one form or another, but ask anyone about the lyrics and they'll probably give you any number of different answers. Is it a straightforward number about a green dress? Is it a Christmas song? Is it romantic? Or a raunchy ballad about a prostitute? Over the 500 years since it is said, incorrectly, to have been written by King Henry VIII, the tune has been borrowed and given new lyrics hundreds of times. Music historian, Tamsin Lewis, took on the task of tracking down the original song and consequently opened up a vast cavern of intrigue for dress historians and historical makers.

[Tamsin] The tune of "Greensleeves" is first recorded September, 1580.

[Narrator] King Henry VIII died in 1547, for the record.

What the song is, it's a man who keeps giving gifts to His Lady Greensleeves. She hasn't actually said yes at any point, but he gives her more, and still she won't love him, so he gives her more. It's essentially a stalker's anthem, in my view. But what's more interesting, the earliest surviving version we've got has 18 verses, and most of them are about clothing. And I looked at all these verses and thought "It would be really fun to try and make this." Can we dress someone in the clothing described here?

[Narrator] The next obvious step, reconstruct them all using all the historical evidence, materials and techniques that we have available to us so that we can see in real life what this elusive Lady Greensleeves would've looked like.

The Society of Antiquaries gave me their Janet Arnold Grant, and I've engaged a team of amazing makers, both from really established makers and from those at the beginnings of their career.

My name is Constance Mackenzie, and I'm making the petticoat of fine cloth.

I'm the shoemaker for the Greensleeves Project.

This is the smock of silk, both fair and white.

The gown of grassy green.

And I'm a historian of food.

[Narrator] And so a team of 10 different makers was assembled. From shoemakers to tailors to seamstresses to rough makers and knitters.

He sends Greensleeves a smock of silk, stockings, white pumps, petticoats, and then a gown of grassy green. There have been some challenges interpreting the lyrics. The most obvious one, greensleeves a smock of silk.

Your "smock of silk, both fair and white, with gold embroidered gorgeously" threw up a whole lot of problems just in that statement because the first thing was hunt down a smock made of silk, and there aren't any. You'd expect if anyone's going to have a silk smock, it would be Queen Elizabeth I, and she doesn't. There's nothing in any of the wardrobe camps in "Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd" to say that there was a silk smock. They're all of linen. Our problem with this song is it's written by a man who may never have undressed a woman of this status before. So if he's looking at her from a distance and she's got these silk over sleeves, he might assume that they are part of a smock, which they're not. And I'm not going to say there were never any silk smocks, but the fact that we're not even buying in material full of them suggests that it's highly unlikely. So I'm slightly hedging my bets with this by doing it embroidered with silk.

This is the way that we've chosen to do it, is to go with linen and to say, "could it be a smock that is embroidered with silk?" We have endless supply in inventories, in museums, in paintings of smocks embroidered with silk.

So when you start looking at black work in the early 16th century, it's quite narrow bands of geometric stuff that goes around cuffs or neck lines, and gradually it evolves until by the 1580s you've got much larger scale swirling, vaguely naturalistic, incredibly stylized, but more naturalistic than the very, very geometric counter thread work that you get before. Then it was a case of looking at different black work designs. So there's a pillowcase at the V&A which has a design, which is a repeat. So just taking some of the motifs from that and then working out where to add gold in as well. There's a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, the Pelican Portrait, which has Tudor roses. So using those. And it is real gold that then gets wrapped around about the silk core. One of the advantages of gold is it doesn't tarnish, which means that it stays sparkly. Lots of the surviving smocks have black work on them. Partly that's why they survive, because they are a special thing that's got so much decoration.

[Narrator] Heritage Crafters, Sally Pointer, was tasked with knitting up a pair of crimson stockings, all of silk. A huge luxury at this time. Queen Elizabeth I herself is recorded as only having just received her first pair of silk stockings in about 1560, 20 years before Lady Greensleeves would've received hers. Being so newly introduced to England, these along with the garters fringed with gold, made by Mally Ley, would've been no menial gifts.

My name is Constance Mackenzie, and I am making the petticoat of fine cloth for Lady Greensleeves. Everyone was wearing a linen smock or shift next to their body, and that was their foundational garment. And then over that, generally a lot of people were wearing a wool garment next to their skin, either a kirtle, or a petticoat, or a petticoat bodice, which is kind of three names for the same thing. It will be giving her the structure and support that she needs in her upper body so that all of the lovely silks of the petticoat and the gown will have structure and support, but you won't see this sort of base layer of wool underneath that will be doing all the work and holding all of that in place. So I went looking at "Queen Elizabeth Wardrobe Unlock'd" because it listed everything that was in her wardrobe and she has many, many petticoat bodices. But if you start looking at inventories of more ordinary people as well, you start to find either of them owning petticoat bodices and kirtles or you find accounts of tailors making them petticoat bodices.

[Narrator] These petticoat bodices are the prehistoric ancestor, if you will, to the corsets of the 19th century, and by extension, the bras that we wear today. Although no bones or underwires are used here, just layers and layers of stiff linen.

So there are no surviving English pattern books to my knowledge. There are several Spanish tailors' cutting books, and I think a couple of German ones. So I did experiment with using a translated and worked-out Spanish system to create the bodice pattern, which was a completely new departure for me, although I actually used the petticoat pattern from "The Typical Tudor," which is also inspired by this as a sort of universal size to cut. So the back of the pattern is still very, very Spanish in origin because it's just a very simple fit. So then onto that pattern, I was drawing a more English shape that we wanted to achieve. So it's sort of interesting how we've taken the existing instructions that survive for us now and adapted them to create the look that doesn't exist in a butch, tell us how things were being cut at the time. (gentle lively music)

[Narrator] With patterns drafted, Constance has now put together an initial mockup, which she'll now fit to Ella, our Lady Greensleeves. (scissors thudding) (harp strumming)

I could just do with it being a fraction narrower on your body than I've cut it. Now that I've started building it up in layers, I'm gonna treat it a bit like boning. Yeah, it's quite interesting stuff.

We've had open discussion on several of the garments so that although each thing is being made individually, we have a sort of hive mind to where we can throw in the ideas, and anyone who has more knowledge on a particular topic can give their opinion and then whoever is making can take that or go with what they want. But it's, again, just who knows if we're right or wrong. We don't have a TARDIS. It's all interpretation.

[Narrator] Since the kirtle significantly influences the shape of the body, historical tailor, Ninya Mikhaila, will need Constance's mockup in order to fit the mockup of the green gown itself.

I have been assigned the gown of grassy green and the girdle of gold. The way I'm researching this gown and making the decisions is to try and find evidence from extent garments, documentary evidence like wardrobe accounts, and of course visual sources, so portraits that show both green gowns, portraits that show gowns with hanging sleeves. And by looking at all three of those, I can hopefully draw as clear a picture as possible of what this Greensleeves gown may have looked like. I have lent quite strongly on the Janet Arnold patterns of fashion, of course. Janet Arnold's work is incredible. You know, she traveled far and wide and drew up these beautiful patterns and annotated them heavily so that it's the next best thing to actually going and looking at the garment yourself. People's thoughts, but I think we could probably let Ella out first.

I mean, that's sitting really nicely. Is that peak uncomfortable?

No. Can you feel that on your legs?

No, I can't feel that.

Alright. And it doesn't look like it's lifted up either, so I'm taking that as a good sign. Alright, thank you. (laughing)

It'll be great posture.

Yes.

I got some of that from the interview. I'm making the gown from a silk satin. So this fabric is woven with green threads one way and red threads the other way. But it has this really beautiful, kind of, iridescence in the creases and folds.

Where it catches the light.

Yeah, there's a lot of different kinds of colors in there. This satin actually was a bit of a chance find. It's getting harder and harder nowadays to find high-quality, pure silk. So I stumbled across this fabric in actually my local fabric shop, and they had bought a load of stock from a company that had closed down. I was honest, and I said to them, "I think this is silk." And they said, "Well, you know, we can't be sure. We can't guarantee it is." So they were selling it very cheaply. So I got it for an absolute song. It's the absolute perfect fabric and perfect color, but it's one of the reasons I've decided to go a little bit to town on embellishment because it made a little bit of room for that. So that's it. That's been fun.

Yeah, for sure. So this is one option that you have something like that.

Oh, that's very sumptuous.

Yeah. I think if you're putting the gold over it, you want a paler one, yes, 'cause then you really get the green and gold.

That is nice, isn't it? We should definitely take it around the wrist and around the collar.

That would be brilliant.

Yeah.

And then you can have the velvet and the gold on the picots.

Perfect. Yes. (Ninya laughing) There is no such thing as less is more in this one.

[Ninya] What do you think? Show us. (Ninya and Tamsin laughing)

[Tamsin] I think he may have rejected them all. (Ninya and Tamsin laughing)

My student who was here, Talula, spent a day doing all sorts of combinations of those possibilities in scraps of the fabric. And then we just picked what we liked the best, really. The gold lace that I'm using would have been extremely expensive, and it would've been limited by the acts of apparel to people of a certain status. But the surface decoration, like printing and doing little snipped edges that are sometimes called picots. One of the reasons I think their favorite embellishments for Elizabeth and dresses that actually it costs very little. You're just using the fabric you've already purchased for your garment and then a few more hours of the tailor's time, or even probably the apprentice's time, which compared to the cost of the materials is nothing. So stamping or printing, all it needs is a bit of moisture in the fabric, which is why I have a water bottle. (water bottle spritzing) And this has to be really hot. (water bottle spritzing) So it is. (water bottle thudding) All right, so. Just start. And then it's just pressure.

[Producer] It's a workout.

It is. And actually I've realized with this, because I'm doing such a large garment, you start to feel like your elbow, your shoulders and everything really going. (gentle lively music) I think the funny thing with period garments is that, but there's not that many that survive with printing on. So it's a bit of an overlooked technique. And also it's very subtle because when you step away from it, it sort of half disappears. And I think you often wouldn't notice if it was in a portrait, but there are a few portraits that show it quite clearly.

[Narrator] The gown is now well underway, so it is time to check back in on Constance to see how she's getting on with the kirtle.

Your founding layers were quite often a basic fabric like wool, or linen, or a mixture of the two. If you look at sort of examples of Tudor underwear, it's nearly always listed as red, and the red is considered to be very healthy and very warming. And the idea of wearing a wool layer next to your linen layer on your body was also a way of keeping you warm, and safe, and healthy. In Britain, at this time, there were lots of pairs of bodies and petticoat bodies mentioned in wills and inventories and the like, which don't talk about having whale bones sewn in. They only talk about buckram and canvas as the stiffening. So, part of my experimentation with this was creating my own linen buckram. Seeing how I can create that stiffness and structure. So it's sort of like a flexible stiffening, which is very similar to whalebone, but just a very easily produced, you know, local version because all you needed was old linen painted with rabbit skin glue, which is hide glue, artist's glue. I don't think it's exclusively made out of rabbits these days. (iron scraping) You can also reshape it with heat and then it will dry in the shape that you want it to be. So, as someone's wearing it, it will warm up and shape to their body. But then also when it cools down, when it's not worn, it sort of reverts back to the stiffness. So it's sort of like a flexible stiffening. (gentle lively music) (scissors cutting) (scissors thudding) So here I have all of the pieces that are going into the bodice of the petticoat bodice. So there are four layers of buckram here. Each one gets a bit smaller and then they also get a little bit lower so you don't end up with a really solid ridge on the bust. And then the layers are sewn together to create a stiffened shaped piece. And then this will be sewn onto a layer of white flannel and an interlining layer of linen. One, two, three of those and then four layers of buckram in there.

Wow. (gentle classical music) (fabric scratching) (iron hissing) (button clicking) You can see that the curve of the buckram is creating the curve in the interlining. So the peak of the bodice will sit nice, and smooth, and straight even when the wearer is sitting. I don't wanna sew all of those layers through to the red wool because that will show through in the finished, in the finished bodice. I'm now just going to tack the linen layer and the wool layer together just outside of my finished line, which is the red stitch line, in a white tacking thread. So although that will hold all of the layers together while I'm working on it, they will then be taken out and the stitching that holds the buckram to the interlining will be held in place by the lining that's then sewn over the whole panel. You can see the shape of the buckram is still there and also a nice smooth front of the bodice. And then all of the seam allowances are going to be turned in like you can see on the back piece here. All of these raw edges can just be filed down and finished off. And a lining will be sewn over this to neaten everything up. And the same will happen for the front of the bodice. So you can see there's no stiffening in the back other than the interlining. And then the seam allowances have been turned in. That also creates a nice smooth layer like that. But once the front and the back are the same, they will have lacing on the side seam, so here and here. There's an opening on either side of the skirt. So one here and one here. And then the top edge of the skirt has already been neatened and pleated, and this will be whipped to the bodice when worn. If you look at the Alcega, which is the Spanish tailors' pattern book, and you can see the skirt. The center front and the center back are cut on the fold. They use the full width of the fabric with a little bit of shaping. And the little triangle shapes that are cut out of them are what are then flipped and go into making the skirt. And that's how you create the fullness at the hem and have not too much bulk at the waist. So that's all pleated into the waist. (gentle classical music) (footsteps thudding) So once you've got a petticoat bodice or a kirtle on you might then wear a bum roll, another petticoat, or even another two petticoats, which this time wouldn't have the bodice, they would just be the skirt. So it might reveal your petticoat bodice or your kirtle, or it might reveal one of these extra layers, the petticoats or four parts that are the fancy bits that you want to show off.

[Narrator] Constance's bodiced petticoat isn't the only petticoat Greensleeves will be wearing. She's given a much more presentable petticoat of sendal silk being made by dress historian Dr. Serena Dyer, which is perhaps what gave Ninya a clue as to the gown's open front. There's a lot of misconceptions surrounding the green of Lady Greensleeves' gown, bringing those highly poisonous arsenic dyes prevalent in the Victorian period back into the Elizabethan period to lend an underlying element of danger to Greensleeves and that she's wearing this gorgeous, sumptuous but poisonous gown. The shade of green known as Scheele's green, which was made with arsenic and was extremely poisonous, both to the producers of the cloth as well as to the wearers of the garments, was invented in 1775 by Charles Wilhelm Scheele and was popularized in the 19th century where it picks up much notoriety and thus proceeds to cloud our understanding of green throughout the entirety of human history, which is not the case. So back in this 1580s period of time, this Greensleeves' gown would not have been made with arsenic. In fact, it probably would've been made with a combination of dyes, especially in England, woad blues and weld yellows, or some combination of dyes.

I don't sew everything by hand unless the project demands it. So with this one, for example, the, you know, the main seams of the skirt have been machined, but you won't find any machine stitch. It's all right. It's all hidden away.

[Producer] Greensleeves has her green sleeve.

[Ninya] Maybe she can have two.

[Producer] Yeah. (Ninya laughing)

So this skirt has 12 panels. So the modern fabric was actually 54 inches wide. But because we know that 16th-century silks were never more than 22 inches wide, I deliberately cut it into 18-inch strips and then sewed it back together again. Which seems a strange thing to do, but it means that you end up with the right number of seams in the skirt that there should be. It's one of the few things we, we can say we never thought the gown would've had. Yeah.

There she is.

Yeah. (Ninya laughing) Wonderful. (fabric scratching) (gentle lively music)

My name's Eva. I've been doing shoemaking for a few years now. So I'm making the milk-white pumps. Modern shoes don't interest me in the slightest, but give me a 16th-century shoe, and I'm like, I'm in my element, you know?

[Producer] Yeah, yeah.

So I'm making the pumps as white as was the milk. So a big part of this was trying to work out what are pumps in the 16th century. Is it just a generic term for a shoe? Is it a specific shoe? The main thing was just going through as many of the usages of the word pump as I could find. I think the first one appears in about 1550 and up to about 1650. So a hundred years. And just reading loads and loads where it just appears incidentally. And actually one of the best things I found was a book to help you learn

French. And so it had these two conversations, in French and English. And this guy getting up in the morning, he talks about putting on his pumps and the decision behind, "Oh, it's quite a nice day today. It's quite hot, so I'll put them on because they're single soled." And it was like, "Ah, bingo. There we go." Our French book and a few of the other sources described it as being a slip-on shoe.

So the start was making a mockup, which is a fairly simple design. So I made a pattern, cut that out of the leather. Stamping is the kind of next step. You wanna do that before you start stitching anything. You want it nice and flat. So yeah, there was a process of designing the stamping as well. (laughing) You getting the lens all grubby.

- [Producer] Oh my God. (tools rattling)

- It was a few extant shoes that are in various museums, and they tend to be leather, but there are fabric ones as well. I went with leather just 'cause that's what I like working with. I found a particular example in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which I'm kind of going inspired by that. So I've done all the sort of elaborate stamping and stuff because the shoes, they're milk white; they show how expensive they are. You wouldn't have white shoes if you can't afford to keep them clean and pay for expensive white leather. So I thought, you know, "we'll make them really fancy." (tools thudding) (tool rattling)

You end up with three pieces. These sew together, so they become the back, and that is the front. The next thing after this will be sewing up the backs and then stitching it all into one piece. It's a really simple type of shoe, so this is how people made shoes forever, basically. Once we progressed from having a shoe made out of one piece of leather that you wrap around your foot, we then go on to turn shoes, and then you go onto welted shoes, which happens in the 16th century but is a bit more complicated and takes a bit longer. (fabric scraping) (scissors snipping)

- [Producer] That is a seam.

- That is a seam. It's a hefty one. Trim it down so that it... And hammer it all back flat. (fabric scraping) And then my hammer. (hammer thudding) Yeah. So, yeah, that will eventually be the right way around, and that will go there, and we should have a shoe.

- [Producer] Wow. It is so simple.

- It is really simple, isn't it? And once I've got it into one piece, I can then cut out the sole, tack that down to the last, and then that's when you stitch it all together. And you stitch it inside out like you would do if you're making clothes. And then you soak it in water so that it goes really flexible, and you can turn it inside out, and then you've got a finished shoe. (gentle grandiose music)

Looking at the clothes in Greensleeves, there are some things that are missing. There's no mention of a fathergale, or cuffs, or a ruff, so there are gaps. We do get a bit more information though from a rather crazy song written at the beginning of the 17th century by William Cobbold called "New Fashions". It's a quodlibet where basically they mash together loads of different popular songs, folk songs, and of course Greensleeves. The words of these match the popular version surviving, so we know that they're not words specifically written for this. They have the chorus that we know, but then the words are not the ones we know from the handful of pleasant delights. They're... ♪ Grenesleves and gallant ruffs, ♪ ♪ Broded caules and golden cuffs ♪ Which brings me to think that this fragment is part of another Greensleeves ballad, but clearly associated enough with Greensleeves to justify, in my opinion, adding ruffs to the ensemble.

- [Narrator] Ruff maker extraordinaire, Noel Gieleghem, took on the task of interpreting one himself. Ruffs in this 1580s period are going through a weird transitionary state. Experiencing some growing pains, if you will, as they expanded from their more modest size earlier in the century, but not having grown quite as large, supported and ostentatious, as they would become in the nineties. More notably the eighties mark a big trend in large motifs incorporated into the lace or cut work in the linen. These had to be set in a very specific way so that the pattern showed in a neat repeat across each fold. The setting had to be done with specialty rough irons, which were heated gently in buckets of hot sand so as not to scorch the white linen. Or for those of us who haven't had an easy time of finding rough irons in the last 400 years, curling irons. Noel is setting to work on green's ruff over in the United States. But while I'm here with Constance, she's whipped out a couple of examples so that we could have a look at how they work.

- It's gonna be gathered down to quite a small measurement, but it's just to get the exaggerated figure of eight shape, you need all of that linen. This is a 10th of the ruff that will finally be just to have a look at how those shapes are created. And from there I could work out that the ruff I was making would need 11 full widths of linen. Each width of linen has been seamed together. The next lengthy process is to cartridge pleat or gather the whole of the rough down so that it fits into the neck. So, so far I've done one row of the gathers needed. There actually needs to be three of these rows, so I've done the first row, and that will create the really dense, tiny, they're often called cartridge pleats, but they're not actually turned over like you would on a gown. They're encased in a neck band. And I know that from my little sample ruff, I know that that will reduce it down to the neck measurement. Very simple. Just a lot of work. (Constance laughing)

- [Narrator] A plain ruff on its own requires huge amounts of fine linen yardage and dozens of hours of hand labor. But Noel isn't known for doing things by halves. His ruff is going to be made of a gorgeous reproduction, bob and lace, complete with gold spangles, which will glitter and move as she walks. Truly an item of purest luxury. So while he finishes up the ruffs, and Juliet continues the long black work process on the smock sleeves, the makers have reassembled for a final fitting.

- Separate.

- Yeah.

- [Tamsin] This is the joy of this project, is each element is coming out. I'm just going... Oh, what fun.

- Constance] Thank you so much.

- [Narrator] The gown and all of its components have now been finished. Shipped, couriered, and hand delivered into London.

- That looks like it's in the right place. I'm very happy with that. Yeah, I think I'm all right then. Yeah. (lively music) (lively music continues) (fabric scraping)

- [Woman] Absolutely. (costume makers speaking indistinctly)

- [Narrator] Linen extraordinaire, Sarah Thursfield, has sent in her kerchers wrought fine and gallantly, a fine linen cap intricately wrought with white work embroidery. A piece like this could take just as long as a full gown and is an absolute masterpiece of needle craft.

- All amazing. This is so stunning.

- [Narrator] With phase one of the project complete, it is time to move on to phase two, recreating the story of Greensleeves as it plays out in the song. And so cast, creatives, makers, and us production crew trekked out to Dorset, treasures in hand, to film the final piece. This was to be done at Athelhampton House. First built in 1485, the perfect backdrop on which to stage our Tudor shenanigans. (water running gently) (birds chittering)

- I chose two actors who are used to wearing period costume. Our Lady Greensleeves has written the storyline for the video, and she's very much written it as someone who doesn't want all these things and just wishes he'd leave her alone. You know, you get one gift and you think it's nice, but by the time you've had 18 verses of gifts, cease and desist, pretty much.

- [Narrator] So we decided to embrace the absurdity of the song and go with a more humorous take on the film. While we were exploring the house to get an idea of some filming locations, we ran into Ivan who was tasked with recreating the dainties orderly. One of the few verses not about clothes.

- [Woman] Oh wow. That is amazing.

- My name is Ivan, Ivan Day, and I'm a historian of food, particularly early modern Renaissance food. And I've always been puzzled by the only verse in the Greensleeve song that refers to food. ♪ Every morning when thou rose ♪ ♪ I sent the dainties, orderly ♪ ♪ To cheer thy stomach from all woes ♪ ♪ And yet thou wouldst not love me ♪ And what's that about? In the morning, you expect a Tudor to have breakfast, but what we're talking about here, dainties orderly, it's actually confectionary. The main ingredient was sugar. Sugar was thought to have medicinal properties. So if you combine sugar with a spice like cinnamon, it strengthened its medicinal properties and helped the stomach. A lot of the books that they're recorded in are tiny little books, and the bulk of it is what was called banqueting stuff or sweet meats. You get little novelty things like gingerbreads, which helped your digestion, but it would also lift the spirits. It was what was called a cordial to the meal. And it was incredibly expensive and very high status. A lot of originated in the Middle East and then it came into Italy, and it was during the Italian Renaissance that it became popular with courtiers. But there's much more to it than that. You know, there's a whole kind of subtext here that's going on. This is actually a very accurate rendition of a marmalade, which is a Portuguese word for quince. The quince paste was also thought to be an aphrodisiac, as were kissing punts that had got an animal perfume in them, which was musk, which came from the musk deer. Here you've got candied sweet potatoes, also considered to be a very, very powerful aphrodisiac. Lurking in this poem is always a bit of erotic tension between this man who really wants to devour this woman, and she won't let her anywhere near him. And there's always that tension in it. But sugar was also used as an artistic medium. So, for instance, you could make the beautiful little novelty objects, you know, like this little glove, which I made from a late 16th-century wooden mold. This tatsa, this little cake stand, is completely made from sugar. These march pans, if you read the recipes for them, they tell you to make them out of almond paste. And then they say, "garnish them with these little things, which are called band strings, which are little sticks of cinnamon that are covered in sugar." You get these remarkable little gingerbread figures. This is white gingerbread, which is made with almond paste plus a few spices. Here you've got a seashell and hidden inside it, a more little sugar coated. These are fennel seeds, which again are the settling the stomach, to ease the stomach from all woes. So I think that Greensleeves must have suffered at some point from some kind of, you know, indigestion. So, I mean, one of the other things in the poem, it does sort of relate to food. Hanging at a girdle, they also carry their eating knives. And women, when they became betrothed, they usually gave them a pair of knives. So you carried your eating equipment with you. So everybody had a different set. You didn't have a fork, so you cut your food and you can spike it like that and eat it, you know, from the tip of the knife. And some of them are absolutely beautiful things. So when he's complaining that he's given her these two knives, it's almost as if he's saying that, "I have proposed to you, that you've refused me." (uplifting music)

- [Producer] Hi, Constance. (uplifting music)

- If we have time, we could do 13.

- [Narrator] The film was shot, as many are, completely out of order so that we could more efficiently shoot all the scenes in one location before moving on. It was a continuity nightmare since Greensleeves is given a new item of clothing in almost every scene. And so it was all hands on deck to make sure Greensleeves was dawning and divesting the right garments in each scene. (uplifting music) The shoot spanned a couple of days, which means I was traveling with dependents. As soon as it was discovered that I was in possession of two very historically accurate, exotic pets, they were immediately recruited to appear in the line, "Thou couldst desire no earthly thing." We do, after all, have pictorial evidence of guinea pigs being kept as pets in England from as early as the 1560s. So Greensleeves could absolutely be offered a guinea pig as a non-earthly offering. Juliet very kindly donated one of her wrist ruffs, which is conveniently guinea pig sized, and Constance dressed her beautifully. But Lyra wasn't the only furry cast member participating in this project. Our final day of shooting took us out to Tamarisk Farm where we had the pleasure of spending the morning with Toby, who would be playing our gayest gilding. While we had been blessed with unexpectedly fine weather for the whole shoot thus far, today was the day our luck finally ran out. Battling wind, rain, and about four inches of mud, we very carefully bundled our silk clad Greensleeves off to meet her equine seam partner. Oh God, poor Greensleeves. Oh wait, no, I'm in the mud now. Thankfully, our efforts to frame out the environmental anachronisms meant that the shot would have to be very tight, and Lady Greensleeves could remain lady bin bags from the waist down. (upbeat music)

There is truly nothing quite so magical as an epic collaboration between a team of makers and scholars combining knowledge in pursuit of further learning and discovery. The characters who are spelled out in text, painted in portraits and normally left just to the imagination, are suddenly brought off the page. The garments that are referenced in wills and inventories suddenly given form. We begin to understand why certain techniques were used in a craft, why garments were worn the way that they were and why they cost what they do. All of this brought to life, worn and moving on living humans. It helps us to really close that gap between our modern lives and our understanding of life 500 years ago.

- I think with any project like this, one of the things it throws up is how much one doesn't know. It's really a privilege, actually, to work with so many people at the top of their field. I've learned from every one of the makers as they tell me about the process of making and more about the extent garment. So for me, my knowledge is increasing massively.

- [Producer] If you'd like to see the final music video for Greensleeves, check out the linked card at the top of your screen or visit the Passamezzo YouTube channel. You can also check out our dressing video right here on the channel, where we go through each garment layer by layer explaining the what and why of everything a Tudor lady like Greensleeves would've worn. Or for more information about the Greensleeves project, visit GreensleevesProject.UK. (dramatic music) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues) (dramatic music continues)

- [Producer] Half of the footage I think we're getting is just of the cats.

- [Speaker 1] Oh my God.

- [Speaker 2] That's a novelty, isn't it?

- [Producer] Sir, sir, what do you have to say for yourself?

- This is the best day of my life.

- [Speaker 4] You're just thriving down there.