Robin Hood: Legend and Reality by David Crook

Abstract

Reviewed by: Robin Hood: Legend and Reality by David Crook John Marshall david crook, Robin Hood: Legend and Reality. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2020. Pp. xiv, 298. isbn: 978–1–78327–543–4. £60/$99. Robin Hood scholars, overall, are a convivial and generous fraternity: a merry band of men and women. But not everything in the Greenwood is so amicable. For more than a century, there has existed a diametric difference of opinion over whether Robin Hood was 'real' or not. For the most part, historians favor an original Robin Hood [End Page 84] whose existence can be traced in medieval records of English government. Literary and cultural scholars, on the other hand, take a different view in that Robin Hood is a fiction, or, as F. C. Child, a nineteenth-century philologist and ballad scholar, so concisely put it: Robin Hood 'is absolutely a creation of the ballad-muse.' In this book, David Crook, a retired archivist with immense experience and knowledge of the records of national government, brings this understanding to make a case for a 'real' Robin Hood and to identify both him and the actual Sheriff of Nottingham. This book does more, however, than propose an historical criminal as the origin of the legend of Robin Hood. It is divided into two parts. The first half, 'The Legend and its Interpreters,' acknowledges the vital importance of the early literary material in constructing and disseminating the legend. In addition to summarizing the medieval tales of Robin Hood, this part goes on to consider the contributions made to the legend by antiquarians, archivists, folklorists, literary scholars, and historians. Much of this material is available elsewhere and is familiar to historians and literary critics alike. For students and newcomers to the romantic delights of Robin Hood, it provides a comprehensive introduction to the essential literature and its interpretations required to fully appreciate the legend. A fulsome bibliography assists investigating further. Unfortunately, in the chapter 'Chroniclers, Revellers, Playwrights and Antiquarians, c. 1420–1765,' there is an error that will mislead students new to the subject. On page 48, in a passage on the May games, Crook refers to 'The Play of Robin Hood's Death, dated 1475/6.' This reference is clearly a mistake, as no play about Robin's death exists until Munday and Chettle's The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon was performed, for the first time, in 1598. What is more, this play was written for the Admiral's Men at the Rose Theatre in London, not for a May game. The only play that matches the date 1475/6 and a May game environment is that owned by the Paston family, and that is now known as Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham. The final chapter in Part 1 is given over to 'The Robin Hood Places.' It is from this point on that Crook comes into his own exercising his commitment to 'empirical historical research.' He examines in detail the earliest references to Robin Hood place names. From archival sources, he claims that 'Robin Hood's Bay is comfortably the earliest Robin Hood place name yet discovered,' dating the letter in which the reference appears to between 1346 and 1377. Part 2 uses the same methodology to explore the 'Outlaw and Evildoer of Our Land: The Original Robin Hood.' The chapters that follow contextualize the criminal environment in which the original Robin Hood would have lived in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. The first of these discusses the plethora of variations of the name Robin Hood and their wide geographical distribution—which raises the question of whether the large number listed, most without criminal records, diminishes the likelihood of any one of them being the one and only Robin Hood. The next two chapters offer a fascinating study of Robin Hood and criminality and, more specifically, law and disorder in Yorkshire between 1215 and 1225. The second of these opens with Crook's opinion that the origin of the Robin Hood legend may [End Page 85] lie in Yorkshire in the decade following the issue of the Magna Carta in 1215. Spoiler alert: I am about to name Crook...