Question

give me the explanation of under the greenwood tree

Answer 1

Answer:

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 few brief words of comment and analysis. Note: Amiens sings the first two verses, and a different character, Jaques, responds with the third, which he has written and hands to Amiens to read/sing.

Although Shakespeare almost certainly wrote the words to ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’, he didn’t write ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ itself: that is, the phrase ‘under the greenwood tree’ predates its use in As You Like It. This is worth highlighting, because the phrase originated in the Robin Hood ballads: ‘We be yemen of this foreste / Vnder the grene wode tre’. In the fifteenth-century Middle English Gest of Robyn Hode, we find the following quatrain:

‘Whan shal mi day be,’ said the knight,

‘Sir, and your wyll be?’

‘This day twelve moneth,’ saide Robyn,

‘Under this grene-wode tre.’

So, the phrase ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ would have immediately suggested to Shakespeare’s original audiences the world of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest (or perhaps Barnsdale Forest: his original home), and thus reinforce the noti