Presented here is the transcription of a Robin Hood play, or pageant, by Anthony Munday titled Metropolis Coronata (London, 1615), staged for the Worshipful Company of Drapers’ on 30 October 1615 to honour the new Lord Mayor, Sir John Jolles (named Iolles in the text).

Of this production Joseph Ritson, the late eighteenth-century editor of Robin Hood poems and ballads, remarked that it

is one of the pageants formerly usual on Lord Mayor’s day, and of which several are extant, written as well by our author Mund[a]y, as by Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, and other hackney dramatists of that period. They were thought of such consequence that the City had for some time (though probably not till after the Restoration) a professed laureat for their composition; an office which expired with Elkanah Settle in 1723–24. They consisted chiefly of machinery, allegorical or historical personages, songs and speeches.[1]

Munday had already written two Robin Hood plays titled The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon (1597-98). But what makes Metropolis Coronata especially interesting is that it captures Robin Hood not in isolation but as official civic performance: a scripted entertainment mounted for the City on the mayor’s great day. That matters all the more because Jolles himself had previously served the City as Sheriff—so here we have the delicious civic irony of a Robin Hood performance staged in honour of a man who once held the very office the legend loves to tease and trouble. (In other words: London celebrates its chief magistrate with a sanctioned burst of outlaw “merriment”.)

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Robin Hood (styled ‘Earle Robert de la Hude…Earle of Huntington’) and his yeomen appear as a device of huntsmen in green, carrying a freshly slain deer, explicitly drafted into the Lord Mayor’s triumph and linked (by marriage) to Fitz-Alwine. The framing explains that Robin was driven into outlawry in “merry Sherwood” by the oppression of a covetous brother, Gilbert de la Hude, and that his band—Little John, Scathlock, Much the Miller’s son, Right-hitting Brand, Friar Tuck, etc.—remain loyal followers.

Later, once the day’s bustle has calmed and the Lord Mayor has reached his gate, Fitz-Alwine delivers a formal closing compliment; then Robin Hood and his company arrive to discharge their duty. Robin speaks first, joking that pageantry won’t even let the dead rest in their graves, and describes being ‘raised’ from Sherwood: he blows his bugle, summons his men, and Friar Tuck bustles in with news of a hidden deer ‘for Marian’s sake,’ which is promptly shot—so they are not seen empty-handed at so high a feast.

Before the company sing, Friar Tuck asks a boon: since they have been raised in honour of this feast, he begs that the Lord Mayor will remember them again, especially with Christmas near, because they have ‘choice delights in store.’[2] Robin endorses the request, pledging they will serve whenever called, and the scene ends with their hunting song, celebrating life in Sherwood and the incomparable fellowship of Robin, Scathlock, and John.

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[1] Joseph Ritson, ed. Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, vol. I (London: T. Egerton and J. Johnson, 1795), lxviii.

[2] On the Christmas Robin Hood tradition see Alexander L. Kaufman, Christmastime Texts and the Popularity of the Robin Hood Tradition (York: Arc Humanities Press, 2025).