Oberon – Dressing the King of the Fairies

Having reconstructed a complete outfit of clothing for a woman from song lyrics in the first stage of the Greensleeves Project, it seemed appropriate to do the same for a man. A 1620s song by Sir Simeon Steward appears in various literary sources, as “A Description of the King of Fayries Clothes, brought to him on New-yeares day in the morning, 1626, by his Queenes Chamber-maids.” or as “The clothing of Oberon King of the Fairies.”

The clothing described in the song includes a shirt, two waistcoats, doublet, breeches, mantle, hat, belt, and buskins, made from a range of fantastical materials – botanical, zoological and mythological. Ladybirds, snails, cobwebs, cowslips, violets, poppies, drops of dew, and the Golden Fleece are just a few of the components named in the song.

Interpreting a literary source like this, especially when most people today lack the material literacy of their early modern counterparts, throws up many questions, some of which are only possible to answer through attempting to reconstruct the clothes described in the song. Is the writer being literal, or are the clothes simply a fantasy? Is the answer somewhere in the middle? Given the fact that the first surviving version of the song is from four years after the original was written, has anything changed? Were there more than 18 verses in the original? What might they have looked like? What can this source tell us about clothes and the way they were worn that we might not get from wills and inventories, wardrobe accounts, portraits, or surviving garments? Who was Greensleeves?

The Greensleeves Project team are working together to create Oberon’s clothes and accessories, Passamezzo have recorded the music, and we will collaborate again with Bernadette Banner to create a video and documentary, filming in the magical gardens of Kentwell Hall.

Though Amarillis dance in green,like Fayrie Queene
(William Byrd:, Psalmes, sonets, & songs, 1588)

Fairies, and particularly the Queen of the Fairies, are often described as wearing green in early modern literature and song. As an opportunity to show off the Greensleeves clothes in a different context, and to link the two projects together, we have decided that Lady Greensleeves, having rejected her would-be lover, and appropriately dressed in green, has run off with the King of the Fairies.

Oberon – Dressing the King of the Fairies is supported by the Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries.

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