Robin Hood Roundup, Part 1: Timeline! (7/24/09)

Okay, so I don't know if y'all have cottoned on to this, but I am, like, a huge dork. I'm a dorkodactyl, in fact.

Dorkodactyl!

Proof positive: Last night, I watched the History Channel's History's Mysteries: The True Story of Robin Hood…and I already knew about half of what they told me. Presaging the History Channel is not a great sign.

History of the Hood

But now I am even more informed! Lucky you! And as I promised, I'll be giving y'all the lowdown on my Robin Hood–related activites. So here's the brief rundown of Robin Hood as we know him, right up through 2010.

1190–1290 (ish): Various dudes may or may not have been the actual Robin Hood. Contenders include Robert Hod, Robert Hood, and William Robehod (fugitive, 1261); our Robin may be an amalgamation of these gents, among others. But they weren't gents. They were thieving gits.

Zazzle reps for William Robehod with this tee.

1200s–1300s: Robin Hood ballads make the rounds of Merry Olde England. Our boy Robbie fights with the Sheriff of Nottingham, kills the king's deer, and chillaxes with Lil' John. He rocks a bow and arrow, he steals stuff, he's rash, and he picks fights with everyone he meets. Not so much with the whole VolunteerMatch biznass, this one.

Nottingham's 1949 nod to Robin Hood

1377: Robin first appears in print, in the poem Piers Plowman. Piers cops to knowing RH ballads better than the Lord's Prayer. (Oh, no he didn't! That sumbitch is going to HELL!)


1500s: Maid Marian makes her first appearance. Finally. Old Rob, who used to be a poor-ass, thieving yeoman, becomes the dispossessed Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon. Now that he's a rebel with a cause, he becomes all idealistic and warm and fuzzy and starts stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, just like President Obama wants to do. (And just as it should be, thanks.)

1600s–1800s: Robin makes regular appearances in children's stories, adults' stories, songs, plays, games of Catch Phrase, etc.

1900s: Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks, the Costner idiot, Cary Elwes, and Michael Praed, among others, don that jaunty green cap. But eff them. The point is, Marian is consistently portrayed as bitchy and awesome—she's mouthy even when she's relegated to damsel in distress.

1988: Robin McKinley writes the grim Outlaws of Sherwood. Marian is the best archer of the bunch. Robin, unlike most Robins, is compassionate and anxious, rather than cocky and mocking. I LOVE this book.

Lucy Griffiths as Maid Marian. She will eff you up.

2006: The History Channel hires a man with hair that bears a suspicious resemblance to a mullet to chart historians charting Robin Hood. Apparently, Barnsdale (in Yorkshire) and Nottingham (in Nottinghamshire) have been arguing fiercely for a REALLY long time over where Robin Hood was actually from.

2006–2009: Jonas Armstrong rocks Robin for the BBC's latest (and now-defunct) Hood offering. Richard Armitage delivers consistently creepy performances as Guy of Gisborne. Lucy Griffiths is a fabulously dressed, completely anachronistic, totally ballsy Marian.

Jonas Armstrong: the hipster Robin Hood

2010: Russell Crowe will be wearing the quiver in Ridley Scott's update. Cate Blanchett will be Marian. This could be awesome. It could also be terrible. Stay tuned! (For kind of a longish time. See you in 2010, guys!)

Russell Crowe as the next Hood

Nebulous date in future: Nottingham totally has an awesome-looking Robin Hood Festival every year, and I HAVE to go. The vendors make real longbows! Real medieval coins! Real arrows! (Dudes. Medieval arrows could pierce modern bulletproof glass. That. Is. WICKED.)

Cary Elwes and a sheaf of bulletproof glass–breakers.

Mayhap I will see you there.

Robin Hood Roundup: A Bajillion-Part Series (7/13/09)

I love, love, love Robin Hood times millions. Once upon a time, it was all about Walt Disney. Then, it was Prince of Thieves (urgh, Kevin Costner, could you be more American?), followed by Men in Tights (tight tights!), Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin McKinley’s fab YA retelling), and the BBC’s most recent Robin Hood (which alternated between being fabulous and sort of awful, but ultimately lost me in the sexist finale of series 2).


I obsessed over each of these in turn, though Prince of Thieves, it transpires, was a mistake. (Back in the day, I thought Christian Slater, aka Will Scarlet, was the hottest of the hot. But now, the combined draw of Slater’s [questionable] hotness, Morgan Freeman’s erstwhile awesomeness, Alan Rickman’s loathesome, love-to-hate-him Sheriff, and John Williams's lovely score cannot counterbalance Kevin Costner’s cringe-worthy Robin Hood, whom I would dearly love to punch in the kidneys...after sticking several arrows up his arse.)

Anywho, fast-forward to present: I am on a Robin Hood mission. A handful of the scads of available Robin Hood movies have been added to my Netflix queue, I’m adding bunches of RH books to my reading list (suggestions welcome!), and I just finished Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, about which more in just a moment.

Apparently Robin is quite the national hero over in Merry Olde England (as evidenced by not one, but three dedicated television shows, for starters), and I, too, have a weakness for a man in Lincoln green. I thought this was maybe a secret shame of mine, much like my other (not-very-secret) secret shame (a raging Harry Potter obsession).


But the nice folks over at the University of Rochester’s Robin Hood Project think the RH obsession has to do less with my obsessive personality and more with his wide appeal: He started out pretty shady in his initial appearance (in 1377), but his “motives have been made truly heroic: his villains are truly villainous, and Robin is portrayed as a moral figure who fights injustice. Most authors identify Robin as the dispossessed noble of the Tudor period, and this adds purpose to his rebellion. There are no inherent sexual connotations in the tale (such as [the] lust, adultery, and revenge in Arthurian literature), and the tale itself generally ends with the overthrow of oppression and the redemption of the heroes.”

In short: RH is straight-up good versus evil; Tolkien, Lewis, Cooper, Rowling, and Lucas have done him proud; and this is probs why I lurve him so. I’ll be periodically updating you on my Robin Hood studies, literary and otherwise (archery lessons, anyone?).


Now, Howard Pyle. For starters, reading Pyle’s Robin Hood was superfun for the following reasons:

1. The book is a highly educational excursion into all the ways in which the word “merry” can be used. A merry walk; merry weather; merry games; merry adventures; merry jests. Everyone and everything also has a great habit of being stout and/or lusty; and


2. Pyle’s version, though not the first, laid the blueprint for all the versions I know, most especially McKinley’s totally badass version, which you should definitely read, if you haven’t.

Unfortch, reading Pyle’s Robin Hood was totally lame for the following reasons:

1. Pyle’s Robin is an asshole who picks fights with innocent passersby for no fucking reason.


2. In addition to being an asshole, he’s not the brightest crayon in the box; and


3. I have a little trouble accepting that Robin and 140 other dudes could have lived undetected in Sherwood Forest for years on end. I like McKinley’s grim interpretation of an outlaw’s life, filled with struggle and fear, so much better.

That’s it for Robin Hood, Part 1. More to come!