Why does Robin of Sherwood still matter? In comments originally provided to The Telegraph, Stephen Basdeo considers the series’ changing Robin Hoods, its ground-breaking Muslim outlaw Nasir, its supernatural folklore and its enduring influence upon later adaptations.
Pierce Egan’s neglected 1832 poem “The Queen of the Bow” transformed a seventeenth-century Robin Hood ballad into a polished pastoral for contemporary sports readers. Drawing upon classical imagery and antiquarian scholarship, it presents Clorinda—not Maid Marian—as Robin’s wife and a formidable huntress, revealing the legend’s continuing imaginative, remarkable flexibility.
Thomas Miller’s Royston Gower; or, The Days of King John (1838) is one of the more obscure nineteenth-century retellings of the Robin Hood legend. Miller himself is hardly a household name today, […]
Frederick Fox Cooper’s 1869 stage adaptation transforms Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe into a thrilling Victorian spectacle of tournaments, sieges, outlaws, fire, and chivalric conflict. This modern edition restores the complete play, revealing how Astley’s Theatre reshaped Scott’s medieval romance for popular audiences through action, comedy, music, and patriotic drama onstage again.
This essay examines Walter Scott’s portrayal of Robin Hood in Ivanhoe through the lens of eighteenth-century crime writing. It argues that Scott, drawing on criminal biographies as well as Joseph Ritson’s ballad collection, presents Robin as neither hero nor villain, but as a morally ambiguous outlaw shaped by print traditions.
This article examines Punch’s 1894 poem ‘Bold Robin Hood’, which recast Sir William Harcourt’s Budget as fiscal outlawry. Rather than celebrating Robin Hood’s moral economy, Edwin James Milliken’s satire made redistributive taxation appear as cant, coercion, and highway robbery in defence of property and middle-class respectability.
This article explores how Chartist newspapers, poems, and historical essays transformed Wat Tyler from a vilified medieval rebel into a hero of working-class memory. It argues that the Chartists played a crucial role in making Tyler a lasting symbol of protest, political resistance, and radical historical consciousness.
This new edition of Looke About You (1600) brings back into view a neglected early modern comic history play filled with disguise, court intrigue, and dynastic conflict. Featuring an unusual portrayal of Robin Hood as the Earl of Huntingdon, the play offers a fascinating alternative to the better-known outlaw tradition. Edited by Stephen Basdeo, this edition makes the text accessible to modern readers while preserving the character of the original quarto.
An open access version of the Robin Hood pageant Metropolis Coronata (1615), linking the outlaw myth to London’s Lord Mayor’s triumph.
An exploration of Thomas Robins’s seventeenth-century Robin Hood ballads, tracing how street literature survives through accident, collection, and changing cultural values. Using Robins as a case study, this article examines authorship, adaptation of medieval materials, and the role of antiquaries in preserving popular song within Restoration print culture and memory.
“Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage” was published in 1662 and celebrated England’s new queen from Portugal, Catherine of Braganza.
Today, little survives of Wynken de Worde beyond his books and, in the case of Robin Hood, the words that still echo through the text that he helped to preserve. Yet his presses in Fleet Street and his generosity to fellow printers (Goes and Copland) shaped the version of Robin Hood that eighteenth-century antiquaries like Ritson rediscovered—and that we still recognise today. Every time the lytell geste is quoted or staged, we are hearing not just the voice of a now unnamed medieval poet but also the imprint of the enterprising immigrant printer who turned a forest legend into a bestseller in both his own and our time.
Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), a conveyancer and passionate literary critic, significantly impacted the study of the Robin Hood legend with his 1795 work, “Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems.” His nephew, Joseph Frank, later edited Ritson’s works, updating and adapting them for contemporary audiences while preserving their scholarly essence.
One of the book’s central premises is therefore incorrect … Upon weak foundations and generalisations does Danahay and Howey’s Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism: Re-Appropriating the Victorian and Medieval Pasts (2024) begin.
“Now I would hesitate to give this such a glowing and positive review. The reason for this is hinted at in the review above but never expanded upon; there is no discussion or G.R.R. Martin’s place in the long line of medievalism and fantasy authors which preceded him.”
“Though a heavy tax, or a requisition order … might not in itself precipitate a rising, it might do so in the context of strained social relationships … This strain is seen by the peasants from an apparently conservative standpoint. They cannot accept the abandonment of traditional roles by any one of the orders of society—whose basic structure they do not, to begin with, challenge.”
“The blind man ran. The lame man ran. The man with no legs ran. And then, as he penetrated further down the street, the legless, the blind and the halt came swarming around him, together with the one-armed, the one-eyed, and the lepers with their sores….”
“Um homem que, em uma era bárbara e sob uma tirania complicada, demonstrou um espírito de liberdade e independência.”
This article examines the teaching and reception of British medieval history in Guyana. It takes an interdisciplinary approach by conducting textual analysis of Guyanese school textbooks to determine precisely what aspects of British medieval history were taught, which included events such as the Norman Conquest (1066), King Stephen’s reign, as well as medieval folk talks such as Dick Whittington, Robin Hood, and Old King Cole.
All of the newspapers which covered the event paid significant attention to the panel on Robin Hood, which, if it happened to a Robin Hood conference today, would be a significant publicity coup.
“He unites the exactness of the [medieval] chronicles, the majestic grandeur of history, and the all-compelling interest of romance.”
The following poem, written by “J.A.” and titled “Robin Hood’s Grave” appeared in the Newcastle Magazine in November 1827. It has been transcribed by Stephen Basdeo.
What have historians said about Robin Hood, who he was, and the social and political context in which the early tales emerged?
The following poem was written by George W.M. Reynolds and originally appeared in his novel Alfred: The Adventures of a French Gentleman (1838), which was originally serialised in the Monthly Magazine. The poem is about the deeds of a knight errant in medieval Palestine during the crusades.