Playford Edition:

‘Greensleeves’ can be located in the 7^th edition of The [English] Dancing Master, (1686). 

Documentation Between 1603-1686:

  Information to follow.

Documentation prior to 1603:

 Greensleeves is also mentioned in Thomas Nashe’s Have with you Saffron-Walden (1596)

•    …“having preached and beat down three pulpits in inveighing against dancing, one Sunday evening, when his wench or friskin was footing it aloft on the green, with foot out and foot in, and as busy as might be at Rogero, Basilino, Turkelony, All the Flowers of the Broom, Pepper is Black, Greensleeves, Peggie Ramsey…” ⁽¹⁾

Musical History:

The tune 'Greensleeves' is mentioned in A Handfull of Pleasant Delites as the tune for "A new Courtly Sonet of Lady Green". ⁽⁴⁾

The tune ‘Greensleeves’ is mentioned in conversation, twice, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, (1602).  First, in Act 2, Scene 1: 

• “Mistress Ford: … but the do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundred Psalms to the tune of Green-sleeves.” ⁽²⁾

 Then in Act 5, Scene 5: 

• “Falstaff: Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Green-sleeves, hail kissing-Comfits and snow Eringoes; let there come a tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here.”⁽³⁾

The tune can be found in the lute manuscript from 1605.  This manuscript is numbered 408/2, and is located at Dublin Trinity College.

 William Byrd and John Dowland also composed an arrangement of Greensleeves, in 1590.  The arrangement can be located at the Folger Library MS v.b. 280.