An open access version of the Robin Hood pageant Metropolis Coronata (1615), linking the outlaw myth to London’s Lord Mayor’s triumph.
Anthony Munday’s “Metropolis Coronata” (1615): The Robin Hood Play written for a Sheriff | Stephen Basdeo (ed.)
Zé Maria da Fortaleza’s “Adventures of Robin Hood” (2007): A Brazilian Outlaw Poem| Stephen Basdeo [Trans.]
Zé Maria da Fortaleza’s Adventures of Robin Hood (2007) retells the outlaw legend in Brazilian cordel verse. Robin becomes leader of a woodland brotherhood resisting injustice, defeats the Sheriff through disguise and skill, wins Marian’s love, and is ultimately vindicated by King Richard, blending English folklore with Brazilian popular tradition.
Robert Greene’s “George-a-Greene: The Pinner of Wakefield” (1599) | Stephen Basdeo
The name of the Pinder to Wakefield locals is, as Shakespeare might say, ‘familiar in [their] mouths as household words’. The Pinders Fields, however, reveal an exciting history of rebellion, outlawry, and patriotism; so expressed in Robert Greene’s play in 1599 titled “The Pinner of Wakefield.”
“The Railway Robin Hood” (1868)
The Victorians hated the ever-increasing price of rail travel just as much as we do today. In this ballad from “Punch”, Robin Hood is a ‘robbing’ Rail company boss.
Robin Hood Staffordshire Figurine
During the nineteenth century, various authors such as John Keats, Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Love Peacock transformed Robin Hood into a morally safe figure; a respectable outlaw hero with whom the Victorian middle classes could identify. It was not purely in literary texts that Robin Hood’s respectable status was exhibited, however, but also in material culture.
Robin Hood’s Death
One of the reasons for the longevity of the Robin Hood legend is the fact that, in the original medieval ballads, his origins are not stated. He is simply there, in the […]