EXTRACTS: Frank Bellamy's Robin Hood The Complete Adventures © 2008 The Book Palace (134 PAGES in Full edition)

4 FRANK BELLAMY’S ROBIN HOOD dates from some time after 1450 and describes how Robin attends a mass in Nottingham, is betrayed by a monk to the Sheriff and is rescued by Little John and Much, the miller’s son. Other early surviving ballads add to the myth and introduce characters well known today – Will Scarlet (or Scathelock), Allin a Dale (of the dale) and Guy of Gisborne; some of the standard elements of the Robin Hood story were introduced early, such as the constant tricking of the Sheriff and archery contests which are recorded in A Gest of Robyn Hode (c.1510) and the introduction of Friar Tuck, based upon Robert Stafford, parson of Lindfield, who became a robber and murderer in the early 15th century using the name Friar Tuck, who was quickly incorporated into the Robin Hood story, appearing as early as the 1475 play Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham . Perhaps the most noticeable absentee from the early tales was Maid Marion who seems to have been appropriated from a French pastoral play, Robin et Marion , although this Robin has nothing to do with the British outlaw. The addition of Maid Marion to the myth adds an element of romance to what had earlier been a series of violent clashes and the robbing of anyone who happened along. Romance – in both senses of the word – is what Robin needed and what was given to him by various writers in the 16th and 17th centuries. In two plays written by Anthony Munday in 1598-99, Robin became the downfallen Earle of Huntington (and the setting the court of King Henry VIII) and, elsewhere, Robin became associated with Loxley or Locksley, that particular strand of the legend given weight when Locksley became a prominent character in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819). Robin’s birthplace is often believed to be Loxley, in Yorkshire, although an alternate suggestion has been made for Loxley in Warwickshire, home in the late 12th century of Robert Fitz Odo who would appear to have been stripped of his title as a knight in around 1198 but subsequently had his lands returned to him when Richard Lionheart returned from the Crusades. This additional element gave Robin a noble birth, whilst Joseph Ritson, who wrote a collection of Robin Hood tales in 1795, was at least partly responsible for encouraging the idea that Robin stole from the rich and gave to the poor, a notion that dated back at least to Michael Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612) which reveals that “What often times he tooke, he shar’d amongst the poore”. Now we have a Robin Hood who is not simply a yeoman outlaw heading a band of robbers but a man of breeding, forced into his role as outlaw, fighting for the oppressed peasants against a tyrant Sheriff, protecting the vulnerable at a time when their King is away fighting in the Crusades. His earlier popularity as a robber who outfoxes figures of authority was in the context of a medieval England where the land and wealth of the nation was owned by a privileged few and the common people were persecuted and poor. In those turbulent times – which culminated in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – it is little wonder that ballads of Robin Hood, the people’s hero, were widespread. Thus legends are born. The Robin Hood who populates the common memory nowadays is derived more from movies and television. Both Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the recent BBC TV series portray Robin as the dispossessed noble. In both, Robin has just returned from fighting alongside Richard the Lionheart in the Crusades, combining the characters of Robin of Locksley with Ivanhoe from Scott’s novel. Robin of Loxley/Locksley was portrayed by both Michael Praed and Jason Connery in the 1984-86 Robin of Sherwood and, going back a generation, by Richard Greene in 143 episodes of The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1955-60 and the movie Sword of Sherwood Forest . Greene – clean-shaven with short, dark hair – was a handsome hero but at odds with the traditional look associated with Robin. Similarly clean-shaven was Richard Todd in the 1952 Walt Disney film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men . A year after the hugely successful Disney movie, the BBC broadcast a live-action six-part series starring Patrick Troughton as Robin, the first portrayal of Robin on the newly popular medium of television. When ITV began broadcasting in 1955, it built its audience by broadcasting the swashbuckling adventures of British folklore, first with The Adventures of Robin Hood and then with Sir Lancelot, the most famous of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table in 1956-57. Originally broadcast at 5.30 on a Sunday evening, Richard Greene’s version of Robin Hood was squarely aimed at children. Robin had become a favourite of children’s literature in the 19th century following the publication of Pierce Egan’s Robin Hood and Little John (1840) and was a staple of the penny dreadful, culminating in 88 issues of Aldine’s Robin Hood Library published in 1901-06 and reissued from 1924 following the success of Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood movie. Leading boys’ writers D. H. Parry and S. Walkey helped fill the pages of Chums , The Boys’ Friend and other story papers with tales of daring Robin and his Merry Men in the