My_Robin_is_to_the_Greenwood_Gone
My Robin is to the greenwood gone
Traditional song
"My Robin is to the greenwood gone" or "Bonny Sweet Robin" is an English popular tune from the Renaissance.
The earliest extant score of the ballad appears in William Ballet's Lute Book (c. 1600) as "Robin Hood is to the greenwood gone".[1] References to the song can be dated back to 1586, in a letter from Sir Walter Raleigh to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester saying "The Queen is in very good terms with you now, and, thanks be to God, will be pacified, and you are again her Sweet Robin."[1]
Although the words have been lost, it is suspected that the character Ophelia, who is specified in the First Quarto version of Hamlet to be a lutenist, sings the last line of the tune ("For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy") during her madness (Hamlet 4.5/210).[2] Some scholars believe that Shakespeare's choice of the song was meant to invoke phallic symbolism.[3]