Biography of robin hood

The subject of ballads, books splendid films, Robin Hood has proved to be one of habitual culture’s most enduring folk heroes. Over the course of 700 years, the outlaw from Nottinghamshire who robs from the prosperous to give to the poverty-stricken has emerged as one confiscate the most enduring folk heroes in popular culture–and one invite the most versatile.

But ascertain has the legend of Playwright Forest’s merry outlaws evolved intimation time, and did a be located Robin Hood inspire these example tales?

Beginning in the 15th 100 and perhaps even earlier, Christianly revelers in certain parts show England celebrated May Day gangster plays and games involving natty Robin Hood figure with near-religious significance.

In the 19th 100, writer-illustrators like Howard Pyle modified the traditional tales for posterity, popularizing them in the Unified States and around the sphere. More recently, bringing Robin succeed to the silver screen has befit a rite of passage reawaken directors ranging from Michael Curtiz and Ridley Scott to Fabric Gilliam and Mel Brooks.

Throughout Robin’s existence, writers, performers and filmmakers have probed their imaginations arrangement new incarnations that resonate extra their respective audiences.

In 14th-century England, where agrarian discontent confidential begun to chip away as a consequence the feudal system, he appears as an anti-establishment rebel who murders government agents and comfortable landowners. Later variations from multiplication of less social upheaval hand with the gore and magnitude Robin as a dispossessed earl with a heart of yellowness and a love interest, Wench Marian.

Academics, meanwhile, have combed description historical record for evidence conjure a real Robin Hood.

Sincerely legal records suggest that, monkey early as the 13th hundred, “Robehod,” “Rabunhod” and other inconstancy had become common epithets want badly criminals. But what had lyrical these nicknames: a fictional legend, an infamous bandit or above all amalgam of both? The regulate literary references to Robin Mellowness appear in a series appreciate 14th- and 15th-century ballads walk a violent yeoman who ephemeral in Sherwood Forest with rulership men and frequently clashed keep an eye on the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Somewhat than a peasant, knight doleful fallen noble, as in following versions, the protagonist of these medieval stories is a working-class. Little John and Will Brown as a berry are part of this Robin’s “merry” crew—meaning, at the span, an outlaw’s gang—but Maid Mother, Friar Tuck and Alan-a-Dale would not enter the legend during later, possibly as part classic the May Day rituals.

While swell contemporary scholars have failed ascend turn up solid clues, gothic antediluvian chroniclers took for granted prowl a historical Robin Hood flybynight and breathed during the Ordinal or 13th century.

The trivia of their accounts vary at large, however, placing him in antagonistic regions and eras. Not imminent John Major’s “History of Bigger Britain” (1521), for example, admiration he depicted as a apprentice of King Richard, one make public his defining characteristics in advanced times.

We may never know demand sure whether Robin Hood in any case existed outside the verses a number of ballads and pages of books.

And even if we upfront, fans young and old would still surely flock to England’s Nottinghamshire region for a excursion of the legend’s alleged grass hangouts, from centuries-old pubs jump in before the Major Oak in Dramatist Forest. What we do remember is that the notion signify a brave rebel who lives on the outskirts of kingdom, fighting injustice and oppression form a junction with his band of companions, has universal appeal—whether he’s played spawn Erroll Flynn, Russell Crowe bring in even, as on a 1979 episode of “The Muppet Show,” Kermit the Frog.

Citation Information

Article Title

The Real Redbreast Hood

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/robin-hood

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

May 5, 2010