Editing Robin Hood (section)

===Early modern stage===
[[James VI of Scotland]] was entertained by a Robin Hood play at [[Dirleton Castle]] produced by his favourite the [[James Stewart, Earl of Arran|Earl of Arran]] in May 1585, while there was plague in Edinburgh.<ref>David Masson, ''Register of the Privy Council of Scotland: 1578–1585'', vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1880), p. 744.</ref>

In 1598, [[Anthony Munday]] wrote a pair of plays on the Robin Hood legend, ''[[The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington]]'' (published 1601). These plays drew on a variety of sources, including apparently "A Gest of Robin Hood", and were influential in fixing the story of Robin Hood to the period of [[Richard I]]. [[Stephen Thomas Knight]] has suggested that Munday drew heavily on [[Fulk Fitz Warin]], a historical 12th century outlawed nobleman and enemy of [[John, King of England|King John]], in creating his Robin Hood.<ref name="Robin Hood page 63">Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography p. 63.</ref> The play identifies Robin Hood as Robert, [[Earl of Huntingdon]], following in Richard Grafton's association of Robin Hood with the gentry,<ref name="Knight and Ohlgren, 1997"/> and identifies Maid Marian with "one of the semi-mythical Matildas persecuted by [[John, King of England|King John]]".<ref>Dobson and Taylor (1997), p. 44.</ref> The plays are complex in plot and form, the story of Robin Hood appearing as a play-within-a-play presented at the court of [[Henry VIII]] and written by the poet, priest and courtier [[John Skelton (poet)|John Skelton]]. Skelton himself is presented in the play as acting the part of Friar Tuck. Some scholars have conjectured that Skelton may have indeed written a lost Robin Hood play for Henry VIII's court, and that this play may have been one of Munday's sources.<ref>Dobson and Taylor (1997), "Rhymes of Robin Hood", pp. 43, 44, and 223.</ref> Henry VIII himself with eleven of his nobles had impersonated "Robyn Hodes men" as part of his "Maying" in 1510. Robin Hood is known to have appeared in a number of other lost and extant [[English Renaissance theatre|Elizabethan plays]]. In 1599, the play ''George a Green, the Pinner of Wakefield'' places Robin Hood in the reign of [[Edward IV]].<ref>Dobson and Taylor (1997), pp. 42–44.</ref> ''Edward I'', a play by [[George Peele]] first performed in 1590–91, incorporates a Robin Hood game played by the characters. [[Llywelyn the Great]], the last independent [[Prince of Wales]], is presented playing Robin Hood.<ref>Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, p. 51.</ref>
[[File:Richard The Lionheart - Robinhood.jpg|thumb|right|[[King Richard the Lionheart]] marrying Robin Hood and Maid Marian on a plaque outside [[Nottingham Castle]]]]
Fixing the Robin Hood story to the 1190s had been first proposed by [[John Major (philosopher)|John Major]] in his ''Historia Majoris Britanniæ'' (1521), (and he also may have been influenced in so doing by the story of Warin);<ref name="Robin Hood page 63"/> this was the period in which [[Richard I of England|King Richard]] was absent from the country, fighting in the [[Third Crusade]].<ref name=Holt170>Holt, p. 170.</ref>

[[William Shakespeare]] makes reference to Robin Hood in his late-16th-century play ''[[The Two Gentlemen of Verona]]''. In it, the character Valentine is banished from [[Milan]] and driven out through the forest where he is approached by outlaws who, upon meeting him, desire him as their leader. They comment, "By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar, This fellow were a king for our wild faction!"<ref>Act IV, Scene 1, line 36–37.</ref> Robin Hood is also mentioned in ''[[As You Like It]]''. When asked about the exiled Duke Senior, the character of Charles says that he is "already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England". Justice Silence sings a line from an unnamed Robin Hood ballad, the line is "Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John" in Act 5 scene 3 of [[Henry IV, part 2]]. In [[Henry IV part 1]] Act 3 scene 3, Falstaff refers to [[Maid Marian]], implying she is a by-word for unwomanly or unchaste behaviour.

[[Ben Jonson]] produced the incomplete [[masque]] ''The Sad Shepherd, or a Tale of Robin Hood''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/rh/jonsonss.htm |title=Johnson's "The Sad Shepherd" |publisher=Lib.rochester.edu |access-date=12 March 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100404090503/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/Camelot/rh/jonsonss.htm |archive-date=4 April 2010 |url-status=live }}</ref> in part as a satire on [[Puritan]]ism. It is about half finished and his death in 1637 may have interrupted writing. Jonson's only pastoral drama, it was written in sophisticated verse and included supernatural action and characters.<ref>Dobson and Taylor (1997), p. 231.</ref> It has had little impact on the Robin Hood tradition but earns mention as the work of a major dramatist.

The 1642 [[London theatre closure 1642|London theatre closure]] by the Puritans interrupted the portrayal of Robin Hood on the stage. The theatres would reopen with the [[Restoration (England)|Restoration]] in 1660. Robin Hood did not appear on the Restoration stage, except for "Robin Hood and his Crew of Souldiers" acted in Nottingham on the day of the coronation of [[Charles II of England|Charles II]] in 1661. This short play adapts the story of the king's pardon of Robin Hood to refer to the Restoration.<ref>Dobson and Taylor, pp. 45, 247</ref>

However, Robin Hood appeared on the 18th-century stage in various farces and comic operas.<ref>Dobson and Taylor, p. 45</ref> [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson]] would write a four-act Robin Hood play at the end of the 19th century, "The Forrestors". It is fundamentally based on the Gest but follows the traditions of placing Robin Hood as the [[Earl of Huntingdon]] in the time of Richard I and making the Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John rivals with Robin Hood for Maid Marian's hand.<ref>Dobson and Taylor, p. 243</ref> The return of King Richard brings a happy ending.