Robin Hood Redux, or What Happened to Friar Tuck?

There are multiple reasons why Robin Hood remains the most-retold, favorite saga in the English language, exceeding, even in the United Kingdom, King Arthur and all the associated court drama. A perfect saga for popular theater, then films and television, Robin features the poor-versus-rich, the wrongful ruler, furtive romance across social classes, and so on. This year’s The Death of Robin Hood follows a century of film fascination.

In 1922, the newly launched independent United Artists studios borrowed heavily to produce the first notable film, Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, and succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations. Among much competition for successors, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Olivia de Haviland and Errol Flynn, would remain totemic for generations of screen audiences.

In the time of my childhood, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-59) was the first British series to become a hit on U.S. television, with an accompanying theme song that reached millions. Its scriptwriters happened to be blacklisted leftwingers who hid in the metaphorical forest, under pseudonyms.

It was succeeded best, in my view, by Robin and Marian directed by Richard Lester, an ally of the Beatles. In this version, we see Crusaders slaughtering innocent populations, Good King Richard in charge of war crimes, and Audrey Hepburn as the rebel Marian turned prioress (to escape persecution) who tries to revive Robin from war wounds with her healing herbs and finally administers the poison that they take together. 

Nothing since (and there have been many more) has been anywhere near as good, with one interesting exception: Maid Marian and Her Merry Men (1987-93), a hugely popular, perky, and funny British television show for children, which featured a Rastafarian who had his own interpretations of society and religion.

That Robin Hood lore is also, at base, a religious, folkloric saga is not well understood. We start with the Wat Tyler Rebellion of 1381, the first of the Radical Reformation mass struggles, highlighting the deteriorating condition of life for the poorer classes together with the impact of the Wycliffe biblical translation. Lollardy, a heretical Christianity, spread from the Oxford community as lay preachers and organizers mobilized the masses to urge the confiscation of the Church’s wealth and that of the Monarchy. The uprising was brutally suppressed, but the sentiment and the movement lived on across the continent. The 1525 peasant uprising behind Thomas Müntzer, a minister-revolutionary beheaded at the order of Martin Luther, stands among the most noted successors.

It was said that the Wat Tyler rebels could quote passages from Piers Plowman, that epic poem from the onset of English literature. Something is amiss, and protagonist Piers, sleeping in the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire, is awakened by the Lady explaining to him that the earth provides clothing, food, and drink if only its measures can be taken properly: it belongs to all. 

So much of English village life had been sustained for centuries around the Commons and the use of oak trees, along with ash and elm, apple and cherry, to sustain the  human inhabitants with their livestock. The Norman Conquest threw much of this into imbalance, but the expansion of serfdom pushed harder yet. The forest had become home to the deer—protein on the hoof— forbidden to villagers on penalty of death. It was now contested territory, notwithstanding the Magna Carta.

At one level, the more or less contemporary appearance of Robin Hood could be seen as revenge against the rising wealthy classes. For the great utopian socialist William Morris, ordinary people resisted the kind of “progress” pressed upon them by the rising upper classes, while they themselves looked backward at a Golden Age, before class society. A popular nineteenth century socialist idea, it reflected a belief in a kind of religion of nature. But it also reflected the folklorist English Christianity wrapped around holidays and rituals. Such rituals survived into the nineteenth century, including the Mayday night mating rituals in which the Virgin Mary became Marian the Queen of the Village and Robin her necessary mate.

The totemic Child Ballads folklore collection of English and Scottish ballads contains almost forty Robin Hood sagas. With plenty of direct action, these recall, explore and anticipate the further attack upon the established clergy in the name of a higher Christianity. No less than John Knox attacked the religious rebels, “the rascal multitude stirred up to make a Robin Hood… [who] disobey and trouble the town” of Edinburgh. The earliest printed version of A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode, reprinted several times in the sixteenth century, openly advocates civic insurrection and the overthrow of the empowered clergy. As Robin instructs Little John, “these bishops and these archbishops/You shall beat and bind.” 

It is not entirely clear when Friar Tuck appeared in the Robin Hood saga, but he matches the restless element of the Church as it consolidated its property and power. He spies upon the powerful and reports to Robin, allowing the Merry Men to prepare for battle. But he also, famously barrel-chested, is the jolly Christian dispatching the images of blue-nosed propriety.

This year, though, the Robin Hood on screen tells us that his legend is a lie, and in real time, the famous Sherwood Oak in which Robin allegedly hid his gold, has died. Neither Robin nor the Oak will be allowed to die in imagination, for the acorns planted by legend bear high hopes. Such is the nature religion of lore that the Oak is Robin and Robin is the Oak. 

Paul Buhle is, with Mari Jo Buhle, coeditor of the biographical William Morris graphic novel, If I Could But See It, written and drawn by Nick Thorkelson, scheduled for September publication by Pluto Press. Much of the material in this essay is drawn from the text in the collaborative comic edited by Paul Buhle, Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and Forest Hero (PM Press, 2011).

Image: Project Gutenberg, via Wikimedia Commons