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Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography by Stephen Knight

2003; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 13; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/art.2003.0035

1934-1539

Jeffrey Richards,

Literature: history, themes, analysis

REVIEWS123 Stephen knight, Robin Hood A Mythic Biography. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xxi, 247. isbn: 0-8014-3885-3, $25.00. Stephen Knight has become something of a one-man Robin Hood industry, publishingRobinHood-A CompUteStudyoftheEngUsh Outbw(Oxford: Blackwell) in 1994, editing both Robin Hood: An Anthobgy ofSchobrship and Criticism (Cambridge: Brewer) and RobinHood TheForestersManuscript(Cambridge: Brewer) in 1999, and contributing many essays to scholarly collections. He brings therefore a wealth of knowledge and finely honed analytical skills to the story in his latest contribution, which issubtided amythicbiography' andseeks to chart theevolution ofthe Robin Hood legend from its origins to the present day. He briskly disposes of historians' attempts to identify a real-life Robin Hood, considering it 'highly improbable' that he reallyexisted and dismisses those historians engaged upon the enterprise as 'limited and intellectually self-centred.' Instead he opts for the origins ofRobin Hood in an anti-authority character in the medieval village games who, under rhestimulus ofthe social and economic crisis in fourteenthcentury England, was transformed into a mythic symbol offreedom and resistance, something which, Knight suggests, has always been the key to his appeal. This appeal, he argues, has been at its strongest in periods ofrepressive government. He traces the evolution of the image through four phases, which, he rightly indicates, sometimes overlapped. The first 'Bold Robin Hood' is the outlaw ofthe medieval ballads which constructed him as a man ofthe people, living free in the greenwood, celebrating borh his physical prowess and quick-witted trickery. In the earliest versions, he is not found robbing the rich to give to the poor—rhat comes later. The second phase, 'Robert, Earl of Huntingdon,' charts the process of gentrification beginning in the sixteenth century which not only located Robin in the reigns ofRichard I and KingJohn, transforming him into a rebel against unjust authority rather than authority per se, and made him the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon, making him more appealing to genteel audiences. This second phase began with a brace ofplays by Anthony Munday, The Downfall ofRobert, Earlof Huntingdon and The Death ofRobert, Earl ofHuntingdon, dating from 1598 and 1599· The third phase, 'Robin Hood, Esquire' traces the emergence ofRomantic Robin from the coincidence ofthe near simultaneous appearance in 1818—20 ofverses on the hero by young poets John Keats, Leigh Hunt, and John Hamilton Reynolds; SirWalter Scon's novel Ivanhoewhich imbued the mythwith racial and nationalist overtones; and Thomas Love Peacocks novella MaidMarian which used the story to critique opposition to the Reform movement. This development enabled the Robin Hood myth to be put simultaneouslyto the service ofa conservative agenda (Scott), a liberal agenda (Peacock) and a radical agenda (Keats), thus universalizing the appeal. The fourth incarnation, 'Robin Hood of Hollywood,' traces his career in rhe cinema and emergence as an Anglo-American all-action hero. Knight also finds time in his study to include short but acute analyses ofthe Children's Book Robin, rhe Feminist Robin and the non-mainstream Robin ofoperaand pantomime.While 124ARTHURIANA picking his way surefootedly through the multiplicity ofdiverse images ofRobin, he is very good at establishing the continuing links between the various incarnations. There is always room for disagreement with Knight's judgments. His dismissal of the 1950 film Rogues ofSherwoodForest as 'fairly unexciting' is a curious comment on this rollicking, roistering, all-action swashbuckler. He takes an unexpectedly positive and benign view ofKevin Costner's 1991 film Robin Hood—Prince ofThieves, which for most people was dominated by Alan Rickman's gloriously over-thc-top Sherriffrather rhan Costner's lacklustre and sanctimonious Robin. There are also a few uncharacteristic slips. The 1588 play George-a-Greene was attributed to Robert Greene not Richard Greene, who was too busystarringin rhe 1950s television series to write an Elizabethan play. The inverted commas he puts around the title ofthe composer of the i860 opera Robin Hood, 'Professor' MacFarren suggests that is unaware that George Alexander MacFarren was indeed Professor of Music at Cambridge. Knight also seems not to realize that the 1872 novel Prince ofThieves, attributed to Dumas, is basically a French translation ofPierce Egan's mid-Victorian 'penny dreadful' version ofthe story. But these minor cavils aside, this...