Brief synopsis of character in historical records

 

There are historians and others who have invested a lot of time and effort into proving that Robin Hood was a real person. The name, or variants of it, does appear in parish records. There is a mention in the reign of Edward II, in the year 13161. There is a Robert Hood and his wife Matilda around 13572. Other records place him in the 1190's, in the 1260's and so on. Be it Robin or Robert, Hood or Hode, it would seem that we can not be talking about a particular individual. Even this brief summary covers over two centuries, and to discover if an individual did really exist does not shed light on the telling of the stories that surround the character. There may well have been a man with this name, maybe he did some of the things attributed to the character, but what is important for this discussion is that a mythology accumulated round the name of Robin Hood over many centuries through to the present day.

He changed, as we will see, and continues to change to fit the needs of each successive audience. Other writers have expressed the opinion that the name was a title or a nickname attributed to anyone who displayed the characteristics of the figure as he was portrayed in the ballads and prose written about him. This, again, has truth inherent within it, and is of particular significance in the way Richard Carpenter, the writer of the HTV television series Robin of Sherwood approached the tales, as we will examine in the main body of this work. So fictional, or real, or both is beyond our scope to prove and is, as far as the archetypal story is concerned, mostly irrelevant. The first subject we will concern ourselves with is that of the ballads, prose, and poetry that included or mentioned Robin Hood, as it is in these that the main constituents of the familiar story and the characters that form Robin's band of merry men,(and, notably, one woman) are introduced.

1- Robin Hood; an Historical enquiry. Page 17, Line 3.

2- Robin Hood; an Historical enquiry. Page 17, Line 19.