Jim - First let me thank you for starting this thread. Having practiced Renaissance music on the guitar (no money for a lute) and researching a lot of music I found a lot of folk songs with these composers, some of them more than bawdy.

I absolutely agree with Ian about his statement: It is wrong to think of Dowland as a classical composer: in Dowland's time the idea of 'classical music' hadn't been invented, ...
We can hear the difference of approaches in Jim's first post: Unknown performer 1 - Unknown performer 2. In 1 you can hear the choir thinking "it is old and classic, it must be celebrated", while in 2 they are just singing the song as joyfully as it should be.

Topsie is criticizing: ... he said that in Dowland's time, 400 years ago, 'every home contained a song book, and a lute'. Methinks this man sees the past through rose-coloured spectacles. But Sting seems to be right; it wasn't every house where you found a song book and a lute, but with the townsmen, or should I say bourgeois, it is true. The class who owns a piano now owned a lute in former times. (It also is reported of D. Martin Luther, who used the lute for composing his hymns, and played just for fun).

If Sting goes back to the roots, let him do it. If it sounds well, the better.