ABSTRACT
The quasi-historical figure of Robin Hood joins Joan of Arc as perhaps the only personalities from the Middle Ages who can rival the popularity of King Arthur. Indeed, it may be that Robin Hood is too popular, for during the writing of this chapter, one of my books on the legendary thief was actually stolen! (Perhaps my muse has an ironic sense of humor.) A surer indication of Robin Hood’s legacy is that no less than three dozen films and television shows feature him as their central character. This doesn’t count the many other films indebted in some way to the Robin Hood legend: the Ivanhoe productions, for instance, in which Robin Hood has a walk-on role; the “son of Robin Hood” sequels; “Robin Hood Westerns,” which pursue the outlaw theme in the American Wild West; movies about the “Scottish Robin Hoods,” Rob Roy and William Wallace; and brazen Robin Hood knockoffs, such as The Flame and the Arrow (1950). Like King Arthur, Robin Hood has become a cultural phenomenon, invading many other mediums in between the medieval ballads and the modern cinema. These include the “Robin Hood Games, “a version of the May Games in which whole villages throughout England from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries would celebrate a “Robin Hood Daye,” most likely culminating in a dramatic presentation of some kind. In addition, there are any number of Robin Hood plays, poems, novels, childrens books, comics, illustrations, and other assorted paraphernalia. Unlike the King Arthur corpus, however, none of the modern written versions of the Robin Hood story have quite the memorable power as the cinema’s reimagining of his world. Whereas our imaginations about King Arthur are haunted by the words of T.H. White or Alfred Lord Tennyson (who was unable to work the same magic in his Robin Hood drama, The Foresters), it is Errol Flynns portrayal in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) that rules our recollections of the famous outlaw.
