The May Games and the Robin Hood Legend

Simeone, William E.

doi:10.2307/536152

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(Knell, 1570)…but if true faith, the glory of God, & the salvation of your soules, be not appointed as ye purpose of your coming to heare the word preached, you had better stay at home, than come & count youre selfe amongst ye number of the faithfull…coming with no more reverence to ye same, nor with so a good a minde, as you would go to see some Histrio play ye foole, to heare a tale of Robin Hood, neyther regarding ye honour due to God nor godly things…(Bate, 1589: 75–76)…but a story of Robin Hood, a Comedy, or a Play is more frequently read by the Members of the Church of Rome, which begets into looseness and prophaneness, a thing which this Generation is in love with rather than the Scriptures. (Howgill, 1662: 52) The fact that by the early 1500s the character of Robin Hood had become associated with the “Summer Lord” figure in a great many May gatherings (Simeone, 1951; White, 2004; Wiles, 1999), and so, associated with the often raucous activities that occurred on those occasions, only intensified Protestant unease with Robin Hood.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Early Robin Hood and “The Myght of Mylde Marye”

Carroll

2014

Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A number of reformist commentators in late medieval England suggested that stories about Robin Hood were especially popular with people who were not especially devout. On the other hand, notwithstanding these reformist comments, we also have evidence that Robin Hood stories were sometimes used as sermon exempla, which suggests that they were seen (at least by some preachers) as promoting acceptable forms of Catholic devotion. At one level, the use of these stories as sermon exempla derived from the fact that in these early stories (quite unlike later stories) Robin was depicted as committed to the Mass and devoted to the Virgin Mary. The real value of these early stories about Robin Hood, however, is that they allow us to problematize two historiographical assumptions that continue to guide the thinking of English historians studying late medieval Catholicism. Thus, English historians (including the revisionist historians who have otherwise done so much to document the vitality of English Catholicism on the eve of the Reformation) continue to mimic official Catholic doctrine in suggesting that for English Catholics, Christ was the supernatural being who stood atop the Catholic pantheon, and that Mary and the saints were viewed only as intercessors with no independent power of their own. By contrast, the evidence from the Robin Hood stories (and from other stories used as sermon exempla) very explicitly depicts a rank ordering in which Mary not only had independent power, but independent power which eclipsed that of her Son.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%