Robin Hood in popular culture

The folkloric hero Robin Hood has appeared many times, in many different variations, in popular modern works.

Robin Hood has appeared in a number of plays throughout the medieval, early modern and modern periods. The first record of a Robin Hood play being performed is in Exeter in 1426-27. The earliest surviving text of a Robin Hood play is dated c.1475 and entitled Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham.

The plays which perhaps have been most influential upon the Robin Hood legend as a whole are Anthony Munday's The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington and The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntingdon (1597-98). It is in these plays that Robin is first depicted as a nobleman. Further plays followed during the early modern period such as the anonymous Looke About You (1600) and Robin Hood and his Crew of Soldiers (1661).

The first published prose account of Robin Hood's life appears to be the anonymously authored The Noble Birth and Gallant Atchievements of that Remarkable Out-Law, Robin Hood (1678). Material from this work was often plagiarised by criminal biographers in works such as: The Whole Life and Merry Exploits of Bold Robin Hood (1712), Alexander Smith's A Complete History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads, Shoplifts and Cheats (1719), Charles Johnson's Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen (1734). In addition, there were numerous books printed throughout the late seventeenth and eigheenth centuries that went by the name of Robin Hood's Garland. These were cheaply printed collections of later Robin Hood ballads.

The first Robin Hood novel written, although not published, is Robert Southey's 'Harold, or, The Castle of Morford' (1791). This exists in manuscript form in the Bodleian Library. The first published Robin Hood novel was the anonymous Robin Hood: A Tale of the Olden Time (1819), and a few months later Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, 1819. Ivanhoe was Scott's first novel where history and romance is combined. Robin Hood in this book is the saviour of the nation. The Upper classes need the working classes as much as the working classes rely on their 'betters'. Scott's tale is significant because it is the first time that Robin is presented as an Anglo-Saxon freedom fighter, a theme which many later Victorian Robin Hood novels would utilise. The next novel following Scott was Thomas Love Peacock's novella Maid Marian. The novel was originally intended as a satire on continental conservatism and its enthusiasm for all things feudal and medieval, and in particular the unwarranted praise of aristocracy. Thus through his novella Peacock attempted to show how man’s feudal overlords have always been the same: greedy, violent, cynical, and self-interested. Robin also appears as the principal protagonist of two tales printed in an early penny blood entitled Lives of the Highwaymen in 1836. In Thomas Miller's Royston Gower; or, The Days of King John (1838), Robin is not the principal protagonist but is an outlaw who comes to the aid of the title character after he defects from the Normans and decides to fight against King John for the establishment of a 'charter of rights'. G. P. R. James' Forest Days (1843), while not intended as a political or social commentary, is significant because it abandons the traditional dating of the Robin Hood story in the 1190s and instead places the Robin Hood legend during the Simon de Montfort rebellion (1264-67). By far the longest Robin Hood novel,, standing at almost half-a-million words, is Pierce Egan the Younger's Robin Hood and Little John; or, The Merrie Men of Sherwood Forest (serialised 1838-1840). As in Ivanhoe, Robin is a Saxon, although he is not actually outlawed in the novel until nearly the end of the first book. The novel traces Robin's life from birth to death. Egan's text was translated into two French books, Le prince des voleurs (The Prince of Thieves), and Robin Hood le proscrit (Robin Hood the Outlaw), by Alexandre Dumas, between 1863–64. Dumas' works were then retranslated back into English by Alfred Allinson in 1904. A 'companion' novel to Egan's text was published by J. H. Stocqueler in 1849 entitled Maid Marian, the Forest Queen; Being a Companion to "Robin Hood". The first Robin Hood novel written specifically for children appears to be Stephen Percy's Tales of Robin Hood (1840). John B. Marsh's children's book Robin Hood appeared in 1865, as did a penny dreadful entitled Little John and Will Scarlet (1865). The next major novel written was entitled The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle in 1883.

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