Robin Hood : An Anthology of Scholarship title: and Criticism author: Knight, Stephen Thomas. publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd. isbn10 | asin: 0859915255 print isbn13: 9780859915250 ebook isbn13: 9780585162874 language: English Robin Hood (Legendary character) in literature, Ballads, English--England-- History and criticism, English literature-- subject History and criticism, Popular culture-- England--Historiography, Robin Hood (Legendary character) , Outlaws--England-- Historiography, Out publication date: 1999 PR2129.R62 1999eb lcc: PR2129.R62 1999eb ddc: 820.9/351 Robin Hood (Legendary character) in literature, Ballads, English--England-- History and criticism, English literature-- subject: History and criticism, Popular culture-- England--Historiography, Robin Hood (Legendary character) , Outlaws--England-- Historiography, Out Page iii Robin Hood An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism Edited by Stephen Knight D. S. BREWER Page iv Editorial matter and selection © Stephen Knight 1999 For further copyright details see Acknowledgements All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 1999 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 0 85991 525 5 D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604-4126, USA website: http://www.boydell.co.uk A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-48381 This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Page v CONTENTS Preface ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction xv Bibliography xxi Literature The Robin Hood Poems 3 Douglas Gray The Gest of Robin Hood Revisited 39 J. B. Bessinger Jr Who was Robin Hood? 51 W. F. Prideaux Rymes of Robyn Hood 59 David C. Fowler Robin Hood as Summer Lord 77 David Wiles The Earl of Huntington: The Renaissance Plays 99 M. A. Nelson Keats's 'Robin Hood', John Hamilton Reynolds, and the 123 'Old Poets' John Barnard The Good Old Times: Maid Marian 141 Marilyn Butler The Legend Since the Middle Ages 155 R. B. Dobson AND J. Taylor History and Politics Robin Hood 187 Joseph Hunter Page vi The Origins of Robin Hood 197 R. H. Hilton The Origins and Audience of the Ballads of Robin Hood 211 J. C. Holt The Birth and Setting of the Ballads of Robin Hood 233 J. R. Maddicott Some Further Evidence Concerning the Dating of the 257 Origins of the Legend of Robin Hood David Crook Ballads and Bandits: Fourteenth-Century Outlaws and the 263 Robin Hood Poems Barbara A. Hanawalt Robin Hood 285 Christopher Hill 'Drunk with the cup of liberty': Robin Hood, the 297 Carnivalesque, and the Rhetoric of Violence in Early Modem England Peter Stallybrass Aspects of Cultural Diffusion in Medieval England: Robin329 Hood Peter R. Coss The 'Mistery' of Robin Hood: a New Social Context for 345 the Texts Richard Tardif An Outlaw and Some Peasants: the Possible Significance 363 of Robin Hood Colin Richmond Myth Robin Hood 379 Sir Sidney Lee Robin Hood 385 Lord Raglan The Games of Robin Hood 393 John Matthews The Paradoxes of Robin Hood 411 Joseph Falaky Nagy Page vii Films Robin Hood on the Screen 429 Jeffrey Richards Robin Hood on the Screen: From Legend to Film 441 Rudy Behlmer Robin Hood: Men in Tights: Fitting the Tradition Snugly 461 Stephen Knight Index 469 Page ix PREFACE Studying the tradition of Robin Hood has in the past not been easy, for two reasons. Most of the texts have been hard to obtain and even when available have rarely been provided with the usual explanatory apparatus. But even those determined students and scholars who have obtained copies of R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor's well-introduced selection, Rymes of Robyn Hood (1976), or have mastered the scholarly shorthand of F. J. Child's collection in English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1888) have found it by no means easy to assemble a basic set of scholarly and critical materials: many of the most useful contributions have appeared in dusty Victorian tomes or out-of-the- way modern locations, and the multidisciplinary nature of Robin Hood studies has meant that interesting publications in journals as well known in their disciplines as Past and Present or Semiotica have not been on the desks of people working on the same topic in other academic fields. Therefore it seems both timely, and also a real service to research, to reprint in readily accessible form the best and most stimulating of the materials so far published on the tradition of the famous English outlaw. In gathering these essays I have been guided by the principle that what is most valuable to reprint is material that drives forward the comprehension of the outlaw tradition, whether its methodology derives from the discipline of history, literature, politics, myth or film and television. In assembling this collection I have had generous help and advice and would like to acknowledge the contribution of colleagues around the world: Tom Hahn, Dawn Harrington, Tom Ohlgren, Helen Phillips and Lucy Sussex; as well as the skill and experience at Boydell & Brewer of Richard Barber, Caroline Palmer and Pru Harrison.