Erika Mae Olbricht Program in Agrarian Studies 13 April 2007 Robin Hood’s Complaint: Tithes and Agrarian Theology in Early Modern England
For what in wealth we want, we haue in flowers, And what wee loose in halles, we finde in bowers. The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington
Whatever your image of Robin Hood, suspend it, because it will most likely not match with the representation of him in the texts I will be discussing in this paper. While certain elements of the myth–wearing green, living in the forest, skill in archery–are associated with the earliest articulations of the Robin Hood myth, ‘robbing the rich to give to the poor’ does not feature. Indeed, I will suggest in this paragraph only, since it lies out of the purview of my paper proper, that the image of Robin Hood as the proto-marxist redistributor of capital occurs in alongside the eighteenth-century enclosures and the Reform movements in the early nineteenth century. He emerges there as the terribly Romantic figure in our memory–living on the margins of society while still seeking to correct its severe economic injustices against the poor. But in the sixteenth century, the earliest printed texts establish Robin Hood as a rather different figure from the one who lives in our cultural knowledge (and our films and TV). As one example of this difference, there is a definite, pervasive religious landscape anchoring these early versions, though the texts resist an exact sectarian reading.1 1 Interestingly, the new BBC version of Robin Hood, which aired in the fall of 2006 in the UK and is now being
playing on BBC America, uses Robin Hood’s traditional setting during the Crusades to its fullest extent, in which prisoners from the Holy Land are brought back to England to provide free labor in the mines. That particular episode includes a starry-eyed Robin quoting the Koran and Much’s superstitious and laughable Christianity–religion therefore has found a place in this newest articulation of the tale, but it’s an appropriately
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