Legends Summarized: Robin Hood

Capitalism sucks! Don't demonetize me, YouTube. But in reality, since the invention of money, people who have too much would rather sit on a big pile than use it to do any good, and people with too little would suffer as a result. And since people have this strange habit of correlating wealth with personal worth, it takes a lot of work to assign moral reasons why some people are poor and others are not. Poverty always has to be your fault in some way, and wealth has to be deserved by the people who have it. There is no way it can be - oh, I don't know - a highly complex and archaic socio-political system heavily biased against the success of entire demographic groups, while strongly supporting those who are already rich and powerful, producing a vast and powerful designed solely for the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

No, that billionaire is totally a bootstrapping icon that he definitely earned every penny, and that GoFundMe cancer patient probably just needs to stop being so lazy and look for a third job. Now, most people who picked up on my extremely subtle sarcasm recognized that this is actually a pretty fucked up situation and, to say the least, shockingly unfair. Which probably goes a long way to explaining the extremely enduring popularity of Robin Hood, an iconic folklore and pseudo-historical figure who enacts his own brand of vigilante justice by robbing the rich and using those ill-gotten gains to help the poor.

Robin Hood is the classic chaotic archetype of good: a figure dedicated to justice and heroism in direct opposition to the laws of the land. And it's really impressive that he's managed to remain so popular, when literally every governing body on the planet has a vested interest in preventing people from having those kinds of ideas. And if you think America is in some special exemption category, because we're all about that land of the free and country roads take me home, you might want to know that back in 1953, the Indiana Textbook Commission He wanted to be banned from schools. to promote communism.

Stay humble, America. You have a lot to be ashamed of. Robin Hood falls into a similar cultural region as King Arthur: both English folklore figures with large, colorful supporting casts, who have gained incredible recognition around the world, along with plenty of adaptations of their various stories. But while Arthur is generally presented as a model king and a symbol of ideal chivalric heroism, Robin Hood is a little more... controversial. Obviously. He steals from people. So today, let's start from the beginning and see if we can trace how Robin Hood developed as a character and symbol and maybe find out why he keeps coming back.

So the name Robin Hood or his less popular brothers, Rabun

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, Robehod and Robbehod, seem to first begin to appear in written records in the late 13th century. But rather than applying to a single figure, it is a general description that applies to various outlaws throughout England. It is unclear whether this is a literal description of a "thieving thug" or an actual reference to a character known for similar crimes. In fact, we will discover that much of this is unclear. Look, while a major political figure like King Arthur was written about in large, elegant kingly tomes as early as the 20th century, it doesn't seem likely that a folk hero like Robin Hood would have received the same courtesy.

If it pre-existed this time, it was almost certainly never written about. Money can't buy love, but it can buy historical documentation. But we began to see references to the character of Robin Hood in the mid-13th century. In the poem Piers Plowman, a Middle English poem written by one William Langland, Robin Hood is referred to as a well-known pre-existing figure with a variety of accompanying folk tales, mainly about him as a thief. Now, the text itself does not give us much, but some metatextual analysis will help us a lot. Piers Plowman's original manuscript has been lost, but between 50 and 60 contemporary copies survived, at a time when literacy was largely reserved for religious texts.

So this poem was very important, and it makes sense to assume that the stories he casually references probably were too. This tells us that not only was Robin Hood a popular figure at the time, but he was popular enough that including him in the poem as a pop culture reference was not a risky literary move. Everyone would have understood the reference. So in 1370, Robin Hood exists as a character, and most people know who he is and what he is about. In 1426, Robin Hood took the stage. Specifically, the May Day celebrations, first explicitly referenced in Exeter in 1426 but possibly occurring earlier, included Robin Hood plays: plays about Robin Hood and his band of merry men who would not look out of place at a local Renaissance fair.

Lots of stage fighting, daring heroism, green suits, all that jazz. The May Day plays are probably also responsible for introducing the characters of Maid Marian and the jolly friar who would later be known as Friar Tuck. The first proper written story about Robin Hood appears around 1450, and is a little ballad called "Robin Hood and the Monk" which goes a long way toward establishing a fairly classic Robin Hood canon, as well as some things that seem to have fallen through. in oblivion. the path over time. Robin Hood has the merry band about him, consisting of, at the very least, the landowner Little John, Will Scarlet, and Much the Miller's Son.

In this story, Robin Hood is in a bad mood because his outlaw status means he can't go to mass. And since he is a very devout follower of the Virgin Mary, not being able to honor her properly is very unpleasant. So he decides to sneak into Nottingham to attend a service, which has Mucho very worried. Against his advice, Robin Hood only brings Little John with him instead of a proper crew. Along the way, Robin and Little John make a bet, but when Robin loses, he refuses to pay, and Little John gets grumpy and leaves. At mass, Robin Hood is recognized by one of the monks whom he had previously robbed and is imprisoned, the sheriff sends the monk to tell the king that they have captured Robin Hood, but in the meantime, the Merry Men find out about the situation and hatch a plan to rescue him.

First, they ambush the monk on the road, kill him and take his documents. Little John then goes to the king, tells him that the monk died on the road, and tells him about Robin Hood's situation. The king orders him to retrieve Robin Hood and bring him back. So Little John approaches the sheriff, he tells him that the monk will not return because he was promoted to abbot and gives him the paperwork to get Robin Hood out of jail and give him to the king. Instead of doing that, Little John kills the jailer and rescues Robin Hood, who now feels like a bully for tricking him into his bet.

The king is in a bad mood about being tricked, but he is impressed by Little John's loyalty, and that's basically the moral of the story. One thing to note about this version is that it's not clear who the king is at this point. Later stories often focus the royal subplot on King Richard I and his brother, Prince John, and often present Robin Hood as loyal to the true king. But that's nowhere to be found in this version. He's a rebel without a cause, baby! The following written story of Robin Hood appears in the late 1400s and early 1500s, and evidence suggests that it is a Frankenstein combination of several earlier known tales, in an attempt to compile a coherent narrative.

It's called "A Robyn Hode Gesture" and it sets a lot of canon. We already know the Merry Men thanks to the monk's tale, but Gest further elaborates on Robin Hood's personality. On the one hand, he has very high standards regarding who he steals from. Instead of being something generic about stealing from the rich, it's much more specific about it: there are no farmers, no landowners, no knights or squires, no groups traveling with women. Because, as established above, Robin Hood is a devout worshiper of the Virgin Mary, and she makes him drink that respectful woman juice. But Robin Hood does not show the same respect to bishops and archbishops, whom he specifically advises his Merry Men to beat and steal whenever they get the chance.

Anyway, a lot of classic Robin Hood stuff happens in Gest. He has the classic grudge of him against the Sheriff of Nottingham, helping a wandering knight when he learns that he is in debt, and he and his crew briefly captured the Sheriff of Nottingham and made him agree to leave him alone, which which he doesn't do. The sheriff also organizes an archery tournament which Robin Hood wins, which is a very popular Robin Hood trope today. Anyway, unlike the Monk's Tale, this one features Robin showing loyalty to the king, even though he is not King Richard yet.

In this story, the king decides to control Robin Hood and disguises himself as a monk, so that Robin Hood assaults him. When he reveals his true identity, Robin Hood kneels before him and the king takes him to his court. But Robin Hood doesn't really like going legit, so he ends up returning to the forest, reforming the Merry Men, and continuing his outlaw ways for another 22 years, until a prioress kills him and bleeds him to death. . Skilled. Doesn't the next big ballad, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne, have plenty of new surprises? However, it introduces a new antagonist.

In this story Guy of Gisbourne is a bad guy who comes to capture Robin Hood, but they beat him up and cut off his head. Meanwhile, the sheriff captures Little John, but Robin disguises himself as Guy of Gisbourne and frees him. The problem is that we only have a few ballads written about Robin Hood from this era. And while we know that there was a greater amount of work on him in common knowledge, all we have to work with is the written material, and we have no way of knowing whether the ballads are representative of the larger narrative at the time.

We know when Robin Hood's canonical period was established. In 1521, the Historia Majoris Britanniæ was written by one John Major, who suggested the late 12th century, also known as the era of the Third Crusade and the reign of Richard the Lionheart, as a possible setting for the vague exploits of Robin Hood. . The idea was very popular and has basically stuck around ever since, probably because it gives Robin Hood an evil king to rebel against and a good king to be loyal to. Perhaps the presence of likable wealthy authority figures helped make the character of Robin Hood more acceptable to the wealthy nobility who paid for the stories.

And speaking of nobility... Right at the end of the 16th century, two plays were written, probably by Anthony Munday. The works were, respectively, The Fall and The Death of Robert Earl by Huntington. They were performed by The Admiral's Men theater group, the rival theater group to Shakespeare's The Lord Chamberlain's Men, which is why you've never heard of them. The plays do not seem to have been very good, focusing on the cool sword fights and daring action common at May Day festivities, to focus on court politics and noble intrigues. See, *these* works introduced the idea that Robin Hood was originally born into nobility, specifically, that he was the Earl of Huntington.

This was because noble protagonists were more appealing to Elizabethan audiences, a trend you may have noticed in all of Shakespeare's plays ever made. Anyway, in this version, Robin Hood's outlaw status was the result of his exile, brought on by court intrigue, and it's all very distressing and not much actually happens. Robin Hood doesn't even do much in the plays, and in the second one he dies at the end of act 1. So overall, there's not a lot of interesting stuff. But the concept that Robin Hood had originally been a wealthy nobleman would have some interesting consequences down the line.

Oh, and Maid Marian has an important role in the play. Her name is Matilda, she is the wife of Robin Hood and, after her death, King John tries to marry her. The 17th century saw a major technological development that would completely change the field of entertainment. Well, technically the 15th century saw the development, and it took a couple of centuries for it to become big. That invention was the printing press, which made books relatively quick and easy to make and, more generally, made written copies of stories much simpler to produce. In the 17th century this took the form of side ballads, individual sheets of inexpensive paper printed on one side with a short ballad.

Robin Hood was a very popular subject in these ballads and they became one of the main ways of distributing the tales of him. Fortunately, Munday's portrayal of the character didn't seem to go too far, and the Robin Hood portrayed in print was almost Tunisian Looney. Most of the one-shot stories were witty anecdotes in one-shots with lots of comic relief and cool fights, rather than edgy, complex stories of nobility and heroism and stuff. BalladsSides introduced some key concepts, such as the character of Alan-a-Dale, a wandering minstrel whom Robin Hood helps rescue his fiancée from an unwanted marriage and set them up together.

The side ballads also include the story of how Robin Hood and Little John met, where Robin Hood and a giant seven-foot man named John Little meet in the middle of a narrow bridge. Neither of them are willing to move, Robin Hood stabs his bagpipes and they fight. John really beats him up and Robin Hood immediately offers him a job. See, millennials? Getting hired is very easy! First, you simply face your boss in single combat. One of the ballads from this era also develops Maid Marian a bit. In this ballad, commonly called Child Ballad 150, Robin Hood was the Earl of Huntington and the beautiful Maid Marian was his bride, but he was cast out and he became an outlaw.

So Maid Marian dresses up like a guy and goes into the woods to find him. When she encounters the famous outlaw Robin Hood, also in costume, they have a brutal sword fight and she wins. But luckily for both of them, she recognizes Robin Hood's voice when he relents, and the two live happily ever after. Presumably after a couple of plasters are applied. Side ballads did not remain popular forever, but were quickly replaced by Garlands, which were just packages of side ballads sold in bulk. They didn't really change anything, but they helped keep Robin Hood in the mainstream.

A noted ballad writer named Martin Parker made an effort to codify the entire canonical life of Robin Hood into one grand ballad, based on everything that preceded it. He called it "A True Story of Robin Hood" and it states that Robin Hood started out as the Earl of Huntington, made an enemy of an abbot, and as a result ended up stuck as an outlaw, spending his years as an outlaw evading the king's men, robbing the clergy and helping the poor, but ended up asking the king for forgiveness. Unfortunately, before it could be granted, Robin became ill, and when he went to have all the illness removed by a friar, the friar bled him to death.

Man, Robin Hood always comes off as a punk in these stories. Robin Hood never really left the public consciousness, but there was a bit of a lull in attention until 1795, when this guy, Joseph Ritson, codified everything you could find about Robin Hood in the conservatively titled "Robin Hood: A Collection of All the ancient." Poems, songs and ballads, now existing, in relation to that famous outlaw, to which are preceded historical anecdotes of his life", which really did nothing more than give contemporary writers a single source to turn to when referring to Then, in 1819, Sir Walter Scott wrote Ivanhoe, a highly influential work of historical fiction credited with reviving popular interest in the Middle Ages.

Robin Hood, or as he is known in the text basically without any For this reason, Robin of Locksley is an important supporting character in the story, most notably winning an archery contest by breaking an arrow in half, as well as helping King Richard on multiple occasions. This novel practically single-handedly solidifies the characterization of Robin Hood as a patriotic rebel and a noble trickster firmly on the side of good. Then, in 1883, Howard Pyle wrote another Robin Hood compilation book, this one specifically aimed at children, called "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." The book covers Robin Hood's first encounters with Little John, Friar Tuck and Alan-a-Dale, and gives the entire crew a happy ending when they are pardoned by King Richard, leaving the evil sheriff gnashing his teeth in a manner suitably villainous. .

Pyle was also determined to keep things kid-friendly, which meant rewriting many of the stories to make Robin Hood less of an idiot. In most of his appearances in ballads, Robin Hood was a real bandit. He had a moral code, but he still robbed people for the sake of robbing people. And sometimes he killed people a little. He was an outcast noble, but he was an outcast. Pyle decided that it would be better if Robin Hood were an untroubled favorite, so the robberies of him refocused on redistributing wealth to help the poor, and all of his murders became self-defense.

This heroic Robin Hood fit well with the noble, outlaw version of Ivanhoe and was generally funnier too. Outlawing with a moral code is fine. But the model hero who operates outside the law is fun! In fact, it's pretty funny that this is the version of Robin Hood that made it to the present day. The silent film era is generally considered to have started in 1894, but it didn't actually start until the early 1910s. Which makes the fact that the first Robin Hood film was made in 1908 *very* impressive. They really didn't waste any time. Between 1912 and 1913, five films about Robin Hood were released, and since then there have been at least one every decade, usually more.

So I think it's time we ask the question: Why is Robin Hood so popular? Whenever entertainment technology takes a step forward, one of the first things we adapt is Robin Hood. Plays, printed ballads, printed books, silent films, animation... Why is it our favorite? Well, generally speaking, I think it's because of something you may have noticed through this video: we don't really have much to go on with him. People keep writing about him, people keep trying to nail down the story of his life and it never works. Robin Hood's life is very loosely defined. At some point, for some reason, he becomes an outlaw.

He takes on a group of colorful characters, including the great Little John, the friendly Friar Tuck, the whimsical Alan-a-Dale and the surprisingly self-sufficient Maid Marian. Robin Hood and his Merry Men have a variety of adventures, facing the evil but somewhat pathetic Sheriff of Nottingham and the smaller-scale villainy of Guy of Gisbourne, earning points from King Richard while facing the machinations of Prince John. and then maybe Robin will die. It's not a lot of concrete plot points to work with, but it gives the aspiring writer a full cast to work with. You've got a hero, a handful of villains, a love interest, a colorful support team, even a big aloof guy in the Crusades to pounce on when the situation gets dire.

A group of fully developed characters with interesting dynamics and no rigid plot points to work out? That's a writer's dream! And Robin Hood is a very versatile protagonist. He's a role model, with a strict moral code and all that jazz, but he's also mischievous and clever, with a propensity for doing tricks, stunts, and showing off. He loses a lot and is often helped or saved by his group, which means he's not indestructible, but he also scores some pretty big wins, so he's not always the butt of the joke. The characters already have an interesting dynamic, but a lot of his Merry Men are completely undefined, so you can basically put whatever characters you want in there.

And Robin Hood is a canonical busybody who keeps meddling in people's lives and solving their problems when they turn out to be too distraught to steal. If the setting is vaguely medieval and vaguely English, he can just show up and help the good guys. That's what happened at Ivanhoe! I'm pretty sure Robin Hood has remained so popular because he is a perfect combination of great central characters and almost no plot. The only coherent plot point is the "evil sheriff" and that facilitates the antagonism. You can literally make up whatever you want, and people do it... a lot... a lot... a lot.

And it seems that this continues to confuse people. Everyone periodically tries to find some way to summarize everything in Robin Hood's life, and it never ends up making sense, because the actual events barely matter. The characters are the reason the story has lasted over 700 years. I mean, there are what, four different books from different eras that claim to be the definitive story of Robin Hood? When will people stop trying to create a coherent narrative out of this character's life and development? Oh, oh no ♪ Robin Hood and Little John walking through the woods, laughing at what each other has to say ♪ ♪ Remembering and this and that and having a good time, oohdelally oohdelally golly what a day ♪ ♪ Oohdelally oodelally golly what a day ♪ Oohdelally- Really?

How was *that* ruining me?