Matter of the Greenwood Worldview
Robin of the May Games
A parish fundraiser with a lord of misrule
- In one line
- For a century and a half, Robin Hood was mainly something you did, not something you read: a costumed parish revel with a summer king, money-gathering, morris dancing, and enough disorder that authorities kept banning it.
- Core claim
- The performance tradition is at least as important as the ballad tradition and better documented, because parishes kept accounts. Churchwardens' records from Exeter, Croscombe, Kingston-upon-Thames and elsewhere show Robin Hood games as a reliable fundraising device from the 1420s. In Scotland the associated figure is the Abbot of Unreason. Reformation and Tudor authorities repeatedly suppressed them.
- Canon
- Churchwardens' accounts and civic records; Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham (the c. 1475 play fragment, the earliest surviving dramatic text); Robin Hood and the Friar and Robin Hood and the Potter (printed play texts, c. 1560); the Paston letter of 1473 complaining of a servant kept 'thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod'.
- Tone
- Festive, participatory, mildly riotous. Money is extracted from bystanders in character.
- Robin is
- A summer lord: an office anyone can hold for a season, closer to a Lord of Misrule than to an individual outlaw.
- The politics
- Licensed disorder that regularly stopped being licensed. Robin Hood costume was used as cover in actual disturbances, which is why the figure appears in prosecution records as well as accounts.
- What it suppresses
- The idea that Robin Hood is a story with a fixed plot at all. In the games he is a role.
- Period
- c. 1420 - c. 1590
Game hooks
Roguelike. Run modifier REVEL. You are not Robin; you are a parish trying to fund a church roof by staging a Robin Hood game. Resources are ale, costume, volunteers and goodwill. Escalating disorder raises takings and risk simultaneously. Failure states include a magistrate, not a monster.
Visual novel. Backstage comedy. The player casts and manages a village play; the plot of the play and the plot of the village bleed into each other.
Key documents
Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham (play fragment), Robin Hood and the Friar, Churchwardens' accounts recording Robin Hood games, Paston letter, 1473
Key figures
Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, Little John
Key scholars
John Marshall and Philip Butterworth, David Wiles, Stephen Knight, Thomas H. Ohlgren
Everything filed under this worldview (20)
| Type | Card | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Figure | Friar Tuck | Also a latecomer, entering through the play tradition (Robin Hood and the Friar). A real chaplain, Robert Stafford of Lindfield, used 'Frere Tuk' as an outlaw a… |
| Figure | Little John | Robin's chief companion from the earliest texts and, in the Monk, effectively the hero - he rescues Robin, kills the monk and the page, and openly tells Robin h… |
| Figure | Maid Marian | Absent from every early ballad. Marion arrives from the French pastourelle tradition - Adam de la Halle's Jeu de Robin et de Marion (c. 1283) - by way of the Ma… |
| Figure | Robin Hood | The outlaw of the greenwood. A yeoman in the earliest surviving texts, a summer-game role in the parish revels, an earl from 1598, a redistributor from 1795, a … |
| Document | Churchwardens' accounts recording Robin Hood games | Parish financial records from Exeter, Croscombe (Somerset), Kingston-upon-Thames, Yeovil and elsewhere show Robin Hood gatherings as a standard and lucrative fu… |
| Document | Paston letter, 1473 | Sir John Paston complains that a servant he kept 'thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham' has left his service. Casual, de… |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar | Robin makes the friar carry him across a stream, the friar dumps him in it, and they fight to a standstill before the friar joins the band. Child 123. The comic… |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Friar | Play text introducing Friar Tuck and, in some versions, a Maid Marian with a distinctly bawdy register. Printed by William Copland with the Gest. |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Potter | Robin loses a fight to a potter, takes his clothes and cart, sells pots cheaply in Nottingham to get near the Sheriff, and lures him into the forest. Comic, non… |
| Document | Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham (play fragment) | The earliest surviving Robin Hood dramatic text, a fragment of about twenty-one lines covering an archery contest, a fight and a beheading. Evidence that the ga… |
| Scholar | David Wiles | The Early Plays of Robin Hood (1981), the foundational study of the play and game tradition. |
| Scholar | Jeffrey L. Singman | Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend (1998); detailed work on the games and the gentrification. |
| Scholar | John Marshall and Philip Butterworth | Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games - Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies. The key resource for the performance traditi… |
| Scholar | Stephen Knight | The central modern authority: Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw (1994), Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (1999), editor of… |
| Topic | The greenwood is a legal category | Forest in this period does not mean woodland; it means land under forest law, where the king's venison and vert are protected by a separate and notoriously rese… |
| Topic | Where Maid Marian comes from | From the French pastoral tradition - Adam de la Halle's Jeu de Robin et de Marion (c. 1283) pairs a shepherd Robin with a Marion - by way of the English May gam… |
| Event | Adam de la Halle, Le Jeu de Robin et de Marion | A French pastoral play pairing a Robin with a Marion. The likely ultimate source of Maid Marian. |
| Event | Parish Robin Hood games appear in churchwardens' accounts | Exeter, Croscombe, Kingston and elsewhere. For 150 years this is what Robin Hood mainly is. |
| Event | Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham play fragment | The earliest surviving Robin Hood dramatic text. |
| Event | Sir John Paston's Robin Hood player leaves his service | Domestic evidence for household performance of Robin Hood and St George. |
On this machine
| Holding | Kind | Path |
|---|---|---|
| John Marshall & Philip Butterworth, Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games | scholarship | E:\pdf\Robin Hood\John Marshall_ Philip Butterworth Early English Performance_ Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games... libgen li.pdf |
Provenance
- Source method
- Web research plus local holding (Marshall and Butterworth, Early English Performance: Medieval Plays and Robin Hood Games)
- Review status
- DRAFT
- Confidence
- HIGH