![]() ![]() Some of their conclusions deserve an in-depth discussion here. So where does Robin Hood begin? When does the ‘real’ figure emerge in history and when do stories about him begin to appear? I should say that it’s very flattering to know some of you have read my book, but I must confess my own book has been superseded in some respects by two very recent scholarly works-David Crook’s Robin Hood: Legend and Reality (2021) and Lesley Coote’s Storyworlds of Robin Hood (2020). As a result, Ritson initiated the modern academic study of Robin Hood.įollowing in Ritson’s footsteps, what we will discuss is today are the origins of the legend, a look at the most likely ‘real’ Robin Hood candidate, the origin and significance of the medieval Robin Hood text and, briefly, the key critical themes underlying Robin Hood’s representation in post-medieval British popular culture. Ritson, whose book was reprinted many times throughout the nineteenth, and even into the twentieth century, made people care. Very few people before Ritson, it is fair to say, cared whether Robin Hood was real or not. Prior to Ritson’s book, Robin was either a violent criminal-as he is portrayed in medieval poetry-or largely a figure of fun, as he was depicted in early modern ballads. Ritson wrote a biography of this medieval outlaw, formed of sources he had collected from medieval chronicles, poetry, plays, and out of these concluded that Robin was born c.1160, was outlawed for debt, and died around in 1247, having been murdered by the prioress of Kirklees. ![]() ![]() Yet Ritson did something more: He made the search for a real Robin Hood matter. According to Ritson Robin Hood wasĪ man who, in a barbarous age, and under a complicated tyranny, displayed a spirit of freedom and independence which has endeared him to the common people, whose cause he maintained (for all opposition to tyranny is the cause of the people), and, in spite of the malicious endeavours of pitiful monks, by whom history was consecrated to the crimes and follies of titled ruffians and sainted idiots, to suppress all record of his patriotic exertions and virtuous acts, will render his name immortal. As one turns the pages of Ritson’s little two volume work, the picture of Robin Hood that emerges is one of a revolutionary-almost a medieval Thomas Paine. The title of Ritson’s book seems like a dry scholarly anthology but this was certainly not the case. The book that Ritson published was Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads. The man he was researching of course was Robin Hood. In the end, he gathered all of the materials he had researched on one particular anti-establishment medieval British figure and published a book about him. So Ritson needed an outlet to express his revolutionary sympathies somewhere. ![]() Ritson was one of those radicals targeted by Pitt, and there were several moments during the 1790s that he felt his life and liberty were at stake, owing to the fact that his correspondence with like-minded ‘citizen’ friends was likely being monitored by the Pitt government’s agents (the fact that Ritson had a print of Thomas Paine on his front door surely did nothing to divert attention away from him). Ritson, in his leisure time, was also an antiquary and scholar and had, by 1794, published several anthologies of Old and Middle English poetry. It is in our brief foray into eighteenth-century London that we must make the acquaintance of a middle-aged attorney named Joseph Ritson, who lived at 8 Holborn Court, Gray’s Inn. ![]()
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