Matter of the Greenwood Worldview
Robert, Earl of Huntington
The outlaw promoted for a courtly audience
- In one line
- In 1598 Anthony Munday puts a coronet on Robin Hood's head, and the yeoman becomes a wronged aristocrat who has been in exile from his rightful estates ever since.
- Core claim
- The gentrification is a documented, datable, commercially motivated event. Munday (with Henry Chettle) wrote The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington for the Admiral's Men in 1598, printed 1601. Munday deliberately declined the popular yeoman tradition in order to appeal to a courtly Elizabethan audience. Grafton's chronicle (1569) and Leland had already flirted with noble descent; Munday fixed it.
- Canon
- Munday and Chettle's two plays; Grafton's Chronicle at Large (1569); the Sloane Life of Robin Hood; Shakespeare's As You Like It allusion to living 'like the old Robin Hood of England'.
- Tone
- Elizabethan stage romance. Rightful inheritance, wicked uncles, poisoning, disguised nobility, sentiment.
- Robin is
- A dispossessed earl in temporary exile, whose outlawry is a legal injustice to be corrected rather than a way of life. Marian is Matilda Fitzwater, a chaste noblewoman.
- The politics
- Profoundly conservative. If Robin is really an earl, his quarrel is with a usurper, not with the social order; restoring him restores hierarchy. The redistribution disappears because a nobleman does not redistribute, he reclaims.
- What it suppresses
- The yeoman. Once the earl exists, nearly every later version has to decide whether to accept or reject him - and most accept.
- Period
- 1569 - 1601
Game hooks
Roguelike. Run modifier ESTATE. You accumulate legal title rather than loot: writs, witnesses, seals, testimony. Combat is a last resort that damages your case. The final floor is a court, and you win by being restored, which ends the greenwood run permanently.
Visual novel. Elizabethan five-act structure with a rival playwright subplot: the player is writing the play, and choosing between the yeoman version that the pit will love and the earl version that will get you a court performance.
Key documents
The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington, The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington, Grafton, A Chronicle at Large, As You Like It, I.i
Key figures
Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Maid Marian, Richard I, John, later King John, Robin Hood
Key scholars
Stephen Knight, Jeffrey L. Singman, R. B. Dobson and J. Taylor
Everything filed under this worldview (24)
| Type | Card | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Figure | Anthony Munday | Playwright, pamphleteer, City pageant-writer and, earlier, government pursuivant against Catholics. Author of The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Hunti… |
| Figure | Henry Chettle | Collaborator on the Huntington plays; better known for printing Greene's Groatsworth of Wit and apologising for it. |
| Figure | John Major (Mair) | Scottish historian whose Historia Majoris Britanniae (1521) relocates Robin to the 1190s, the reign of Richard I - the first time the legend is attached to Rich… |
| Figure | John, later King John | Villain of the modern legend, absent from the medieval one. His usefulness is that he supplies an illegitimate authority, which lets Robin be a rebel and a loya… |
| 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 | Richard I | The Gest's king is 'Edward', not Richard. The Richard-and-John framing is Tudor and later, systematised by Scott's Ivanhoe. Attaching Robin to the Third Crusade… |
| 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 … |
| Figure | Will Scarlet / Scathelocke | Present from the earliest ballads under variable names (Scarlok, Scathelocke, Scarlett). Munday splits the name into two separate characters, which is a nice in… |
| Document | As You Like It, I.i | Charles reports that the banished Duke and his followers live in the forest of Arden 'like the old Robin Hood of England', with many young gentlemen flocking to… |
| Document | Grafton, A Chronicle at Large | Reports, from 'an olde and auncient pamphlet', that Robin was advanced to the dignity of an earl. The first printed step toward the gentrification Munday comple… |
| Document | The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntington | Sequel: Robin is poisoned early and the remainder follows Matilda's persecution by King John. Notable for how quickly it abandons the greenwood. |
| Document | The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington | Robin is a nobleman ruined by his uncle the Prior of York and by Prince John, who flees to Sherwood with Matilda Fitzwater as Marian. The first Robin Hood who i… |
| Document | The Sloane Life of Robin Hood | A short prose life in BL Sloane MS 780, drawing on ballads including a version of the Progress to Nottingham. Evidence that a connected biography was being asse… |
| Document | The Tale of Gamelyn | A younger son cheated of his inheritance by his elder brother takes to the forest, becomes king of the outlaws, and returns to hang the corrupt justice and jury… |
| Scholar | Jeffrey L. Singman | Robin Hood: The Shaping of the Legend (1998); detailed work on the games and the gentrification. |
| 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 | Robin Hood is a genre, not an original | Hereward the Wake (c. 1070s, written up c. 1109-31), Eustace the Monk (d. 1217), Fouke le Fitz Waryn (d. 1258) and the Tale of Gamelyn (c. 1350-70) all predate … |
| 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… |
| Topic | Who actually invented 'rob from the rich'? | Not Ritson alone. John Major states it in 1521 - Robin took only from the rich, and was the most humane of robbers. What Ritson did in 1795 was different and la… |
| Event | Grafton's chronicle reports Robin as an earl | The gentrification begins in print. |
| Event | Knight, Robin Hood: A Complete Study of the English Outlaw | The thesis of continuous reconstruction that organises the modern field - and this portal's worldview scheme. |
| Event | Munday's Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of Huntington | Robin becomes a nobleman for a courtly audience. The single most consequential change to the legend before Ritson. |
| Event | Shakespeare's As You Like It invokes 'the old Robin Hood of England' | Robin as shorthand for the pastoral golden world. |
| Event | The Tale of Gamelyn | The dispossessed younger son who becomes king of the outlaws - the plot Munday will hand to Robin in 1598. |
On this machine
| Holding | Kind | Path |
|---|---|---|
| Stephen Knight (ed.), Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (D. S. Brewer, 1999) | scholarship | E:\pdf\Robin Hood\Stephen Knight - Robin Hood_ An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (1999) - libgen.li.pdf |
Provenance
- Source method
- Web research (Munday scholarship, Wikipedia/DBpedia entries, Reynolds's News) plus Knight anthology
- Review status
- DRAFT
- Confidence
- HIGH