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Numerous attempts have been made to prove Robin Hood’s existence, but to little avail. However, historical records have described the Robin Hood of 14th- and 15th-century ballads as a violent commoner, along with Little John and Will Scarlett Friar Tuck and Maid Marian appear to have crept into the story later. In the 14th century, revolt against the feudal system (the idea that peasants could hold land in return for labour and loyalty) saw the bandit cast as a handy anti-establishment figure later versions depict him as a cast-out aristocrat with a love interest in the form of the fair Maid Marian. Whether Sherwood was the hideout of a literal man named Robin Hood is debatable that the forest was a symbol of oppression, and inhabited by fugitives, thieves and brigands, remains indisputable.Īs with all timeless narratives, the Robin Hood story has proved malleable, often manipulated to chime with contemporary concerns. Yet the rugged and vast landscape made an ideal place for an outlaw to hide, as long as he was not caught. Contravention of these laws was treated in the harshest of terms, without possibility of appeal. In the Middle Ages, woodland was the private preserve of the King and his officers, used for their own leisure and for private hunting. That the idea of the forest loomed large in these stories was no coincidence. As such, the rare challengers to that rule were seen as heroes, and their appearance gave rise to an emergent new tradition of the outlaw as legend.
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It was a time when the Rule of Law was taken as an incontrovertible truth, never to be contested.
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As Richard the Lionheart pursued the Crusades, a series of religious wars aimed at recovering the Holy Land and lasted almost 200 years, his malevolent brother John – himself later king – ruled at home. That he captivated audiences who passed on his tale through the oral traditions is, surely, thanks to the historical context of his morally motivated crimes. The elusive figure was, then, the subject of ballads long before he was a protagonist in films, and in those early representations he was cast both as hero and, occasionally, as prankster – opposing ideas that perhaps have fed into the various dramatic and comic interpretations that came later. The robberies of this man I condemn, but of all robbers he was the humanest and the chief.” Thus, we see the birth of the revolutionary defender of social equality that has endured through the centuries. “He would allow no woman to suffer injustice, nor would he spoil the poor, but rather enriched them from the plunder taken from abbots. “The feats of this Robin are told in song all over Britain,” Major added. They took the life of no man unless he either attacked them or offered resistance in defence of their property. The Scottish historian John Major, writing in 1521, placed Robin Hood’s life as concurrent with Richard the Lionheart’s reign from 1189 to 1199: “About this time, as I conceive, there flourished those most famous robbers, Robin Hood and Little John, who lay in wait in the woods but spoiled of their goods those only who were wealthy. He was soon popping up in various tales, ballads and stories, and, by the 1500s, his legend was cemented in British mythology by that time, Christian revellers celebrated May Day with plays centred on a Robin Hood figure with near-religious significance. The first known literary reference to our hooded figure hails from William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman in the late 14th century. Hollywood’s tendency to cast Robin as a dashing swashbuckler, in the handsome forms of actors ranging from Errol Flynn to Kevin Costner, perhaps better reflects the expectations of the silver screen than reality. With a new Leonardo DiCaprio-produced Robin Hood film in cinemas worldwide, it’s time to ask where this legend springs from?