ABSTRACT
Most critical attention to Robin Hood as a historical figure has been directed toward the three Scottish chronicles of Andrew of Wyntoun, Walter Bower, and John Mair, and to the Latin insertion, regarding Robin Hood, in an English manuscript of Higden’s Polychronicon. The choosing of a name linked with Robin Hood, in probably the most popular outlaw poem of the early sixteenth century, might have been equally injudicious. The May festival in which Robin Hood and his company entertained King Henry VIII and Queen Katherine deservedly takes its place as a significant event in the cultural history of Robin Hood. Something of the curtailed time-frame for preparation of the Robin Hood festival, caused by the cancellation of the original pageant, can be seen in the modest scenic requirements and the enlisting of the Yeomen of the Guard as core performers. The apparently unique London parish reference to Robin Hood at Holy Trinity needs some explanation.
