“If Rome be earthly, why should any knee with bending adoration worship her? She’s vicious … Therefore ‘tis fitter I should reverence the thatched houses where the Britons dwell.”
John Fletcher’s “Tragedy of Bonduca” (c.1609) | Stephen Basdeo
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.”
Bad Will Scarlet and the Good Sheriff: “Robin Hood: A Tale of the Olden Time” (1819) | Stephen Basdeo
Few Romanticists are aware of the two-volume historical romance Robin Hood: A Tale of the Olden Time, published in Edinburgh in July 1819. A cynic might say that our anonymous author had initially written a generic inheritance drama but decided late in the game, for marketing purposes, to change it into a Robin Hood novel.