“O the month of May, the merry month of May,
So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green;
O and then did I unto my true love say,
Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my summer’s queen.”

—Thomas Dekker, from The Shoemaker’s Holiday, first performed at the Rose Theatre, London, in 1599. Edited by Anthony Parr, 1975.