"Salad days" is a Shakespearean idiom referring to a period of carefree innocence, idealism, and pleasure associated with youth. The modern use describes a heyday, when a person is/was at the peak of their abilities, while not necessarily a youth.
The phrase is attributed to William Shakespeare, who made the first known use of it in his 1606 play Antony and Cleopatra.[1] In the speech at the end of Act One in which Cleopatra is regretting her youthful dalliances with Julius Caesar she says, "...My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood/To say as I said then!"[2]
The phrase became popular only from the middle of the 19th century, coming to mean "a period of youthful inexperience or indiscretion." The metaphor comes from Cleopatra's use of the word 'green'—presumably meaning someone youthful, inexperienced, or immature. Her references to "green" and "cold" both suggest qualities of salads.[3]
Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage summarizes several other possible meanings of the metaphor:
"Whether the point is that youth, like salad, is raw, or that salad is highly flavoured and youth loves high flavours, or that innocent herbs are youth's food as milk is babes' and meat is men's, few of those who use the phrase could perhaps tell us; if so, it is fitter for parrots' than for human speech."[4]
Queen Elizabeth II used the phrase during her silver jubilee royal address in 1977, referring to her vow to God and her people when she made her 21st birthday broadcast: "Although that vow was made in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, I do not regret nor retract one word of it."[5]
The phrase has been used as the title of several books, including novels by Theodora Benson,[6] Françoise Sagan,[7] and Charles Romalotti;[8] Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s autobiography The Salad Days;[9] and numerous cookbooks.[10][11]
Salad Days is a British musicalbyJulian Slade and lyricist Dorothy Reynolds. It premiered in the UK at the Bristol Old Vic[12] in June 1954, and transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in London on August 5, 1954. One of its songs, "The Time of My Life," includes the lyrics,[13] "We're young and we're green as the leaf on the tree / For these are our salad days."
A sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus is called "Salad Days," and features a parody of Slade's musical as interpreted by Sam Peckinpah.
The phrase was used by H.I. McDonough (played by Nicolas Cage) in the Coen Brother's film Raising Arizona. H.I. states that "These were happy days, the salad days as they say" when he and his wife Ed (played by Holly Hunter) arrive home with their son. Later in the film, upon losing their son, H.I. states "But I preminisced no return of the salad days".
Salad Days is the name of a documentary film released in 2014 about the evolving punk and hardcore scene in Washington DC during the 1980s and 1990s. The choice of name hints at the 1985 Salad Days (EP) by the Washington DC band Minor Threat.
The 2010 Taiwanese drama Gloomy Salad Days is named after the expression.
InKatherine Applegate's Animorphs series, Marco says his dad Peter referred to the time before losing Eva (Marco's mom) as the "salad days", though Marco doesn't understand the reference.
The phrase is a simple one with a simple origin provided, once again, by Shakespeare. In 1606 the Bard wrote the play Antony And Cleopatra, which includes the line: 'They were my salad days, when I was green in judgement.'
