Though Anglophiles may revere Elizabethan England as a pinnacle of English literature, the nobles who constituted Elizabeth's court frequently followed fads that originated on the Italian peninsula. The English danced Italian dances, sang Enlgish madrigals that at first were mere translations of the Italian genre, and even enjoyed vernacular adaptations of Italian dramas. Thus could occur the popular appeal of Robert Greene's 1594 production of the classic Italian epic Orlando furioso. Not only was the play popular, it seems that music from the play seeped out into other segments of the culture: one lute solo attributed to the masterful John Dowland is titled Orlando Sleepeth; it may very well allude to a specific scene in Greene's drama, in which Melissa has placed Orlando in a magical sleep. "Satyres enter with music and plaie about him, which done, they staie, he awaketh and speakes." Unfortunately, it is difficult to tie this specific dramatic situation to Dowland's music, though it seems more than likely that his surviving lute solo was a setting of such a piece in immediate currency among the Elizabethan cognoscenti.

The music Dowland apparently offered to support this fleeting moment on the Elizabethan stage breathes a charming simplicity. Four musical phrases, all told, each repeat in sucession, though the second pair represent only a re-envisioning of the first pair in triple meter. Neither the melody nor the harmony—a twofold progression between a simple pair of modally related centers—detract from the poetic text, which must have been overlaid on the music. The musical balance between phrases, and between the metrically different phrase pairs, only strengthens Dowland's command of an otherwise boring musical form.

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