Robin Hood: Hero of the People

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finds a group of yeomen (independent small landown­ ers) who have risen up against the corrupt local sheriff He states, “No other medieval European saga has had the staying power of Robin Hood; no other is wrapped The villagers are led by the lay preacher John Ball, a tonomous essays. Each chapter is packed with facts and up simultaneously in class conflict (or something very real though obscure figure in English history. According critical insight, but often on themes that to a certain ex­ much like class conflict), the rights of citizenship in their to Morris, Ball led his followers along the trail of rebel­ tent had been dealt with earlier. The discontinuity and early definitions, defense of the ecological systems, and lion blazed by Robin and his men. Thus, a ballad singer repetition in the narrative left me a bit confused, at least the imagined utopia of freedom disappearing into a in Morris’ narrative states to the time-traveler, “Was it on my first time thorough the book, over where the au­ not sooth that I said, brother, that Robin Hood should Luckily, the book’s illustrations provide a framework ten eviscerate the political content of the Robin Hood John Ball was a participant in the uprising of 1381, to help us make sense of Buhle’s choppy structure. The legend. A number of recent movie renditions reduce the whose major leader was Wat Tyler. The yeomen under illustrations appear in four separate sections that un­ hero to little more than a romantic or heroic action fig­ Tyler’s command armed themselves with staves and derscore major themes of the adjacent chapters. Gary ure. Or worse, they present him as the willing agent of pitchforks and marched on London to protest high taxes Dumm gives us a comic-strip portrayal of the peasant jingoistic big-power politics. For example, says Buhle, and growing poverty. After meeting with the King, Tyler and religious struggles in England of the 14th century. while Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” mega-feature of a was betrayed; he and Ball were assassinated, and the Christopher Hutchinson, a supporter and contributor couple of years ago might give a slight nod to Robin’s to Socialist Action newspaper, uses collage to provide role as the defender of downtrodden villagers, the sub­ Buhle argues that Wat Tyler’s uprising of 1381, “the “Robin Hood” heroes for the modern age (Che, Malcolm, ject “in practice only manages to protect one empire first major outbreak of a class and social conflict across Harriet Tubman, Rosa Luxemburg, etc.). And Sharon Ru­ England … prepared the ground for the popularity of the dahl’s cartoons tell the tales of Maid Marian—warrior, Robin Hood saga.” Robin Hood was called into existence lar culture appeared in the early 13th century, including by popular desires for a hero figure to represent their Why read this book? Because the world still has a need in the rolls of several English justices. This suggests that for Robin. Today, Buhle points out, “the rich and pow­ the outlines of the fictional character might be based, erful now command almost every corner of the planet however loosely, on the historical memory of the ex­ liam Langland’s “Piers Plowman,” appeared in manu­ and, in order to maintain their control, threaten to de­ script in the years immediately proceeding Wat Tyler’s spoil every natural resource to the point of exhaustion.

Buhle skips over this tantalizing question, however, rebellion. In the story, Sloth, a priest, confesses, “I kan Meanwhile, billions of people are impoverished below and begins his chronology many centuries later with [know] not parfitly my Paternoster as the preest it sin­ levels of decency during centuries of subsistence living.” “The Dream of John Ball,” a novella by William Morris, geth, / But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erl Yet resistance to authority continues, and so, Robin artist and “father of British socialism.” In this work, of Chestre.” In other words, he cannot always remem­ lives on “in the streets of Cairo, Egypt, and Madison, which was serialized for newspaper readers in 1886-87, ber his prayers, but he can readily recite the ballads of Wisconsin, USA, among the many other places where Morris plots the adventures of a man who leaps from the popular heroes. (Five centuries later, Mark Twain put people dream of a better life and struggle for it openly, modern era into a 14th-century English village. There he a similar statement into the mouth of the whimsical cheerful to be rebellious.” n Paul Buhle, “Robin Hood: People’s Outlaw and For­ est Hero.” Illustrated by Garry Dumm, Christopher Hutchinson, and Sharon Rudahl. (PM Press, Oakland, Calif. 2011) 106 pp., $15 paper.

A in Philadelphia is advertising its production Is I write, in late May 2012, a playhouse here of “Robin Hood” as an action play “aimed at kids five years and up.” At the same time, in Chi­ cago, anti-NATO demonstrators are calling for a “Robin Hood tax” on financial transactions, as part of their demand to “tax the rich.”

Who is the real Robin? Is he the swashbuckling hero portrayed in cartoons, TV, and Hollywood mu­ sicals? The class-conscious guerrilla leader, fighting to avenge the peasantry against their oppressors? Or perhaps the “Green Robin,” who with his Merry Men inhabits the woodlands in respectful harmony with Nature?

Robin is not the same champion to all people. Throughout the centuries, he seems to have been redefined, if not re-invented, with each telling of the tale. Nonetheless, scores of works have probed into the question of Robin’s identity—an extraordinary quest, considering that most investigators agree that the Robin Hood stories are mainly fiction.

With his new book, “Robin Hood: People’s Out­ law and Forest Hero,” Paul Buhle, editor of the left journal Radical America, enters the ranks of histo­ rians seeking to uncover the multiple themes and meanings of the Sherwood Forest legend. In his conclusions, however, Buhl readily sides with those who perceive that Robin over the centuries has ap­ peared primarily as a standard-bearer in battles against injustice. mythical past.”

Buhle acknowledges, of course, that scriptwriters of­ against another.”

The earliest known references to Robin Hood in popu­ ploits of a real person or persons. and other Crown officers who seek to oppress them. bring us John Ball?” movement was dispersed.

struggles for social justice. Perhaps the first allusion to Robin in literature, Wil­ young rebel, Tom Sawyer.)

While Buhle convincingly ar­ gues that the period of Wat Ty­ ler’s rebellion was a “Robin Hood era,” the reader might wonder why Buhle concentrates the better part of two chapters on those years alone. It was a full century after Wat Tyler that the efforts by landlords to enclose the pastures began to get fully underway in England, expelling thousands of small farmers from the coun­ tryside. Didn’t the impoverished population need Robin Hood at that moment to help chart a path of resistance?

Indeed, Buhle briefly notes, Robin as pro­ tector of the poor appeared again in the late 15th century in a collection of verse tales un­ der the title, “A Lyttell Geste of Robyn Hode.” But from the late 16th century onward, a more conservative Robin began to enter English literature, often as an official project to erase the militantly radical one. Following the de­ feat of the Spanish armada, audiences saw Robin Hood as a patriotic national hero on the London stage.

And Shakespeare’s Robin Hood-type char­ acters, such as Orlando and the Duke in “As You Like It,” were noblemen who had tempo­ rarily fled palace life for a sylvan arcadia.

From there, Buhle follows the contrast­ ing renditions of Robin Hood and his band through the centuries. Important examples include Joseph Ritson’s popular volume of 1795, poet John Keat’s antiwar Robin and Marian of 1817, Walter Scott’s patriotic “Ivanhoe” of 1819, storyteller and illustrator Howard Pyle’s “Merry Adventures” of 1883, and Errol Flynn’s version filmed on the eve of World War II (1938), in which he vanquishes (Hitlerite?) evil while vying for the heart of Olivia de Havilland’s Maid Marian. Buhle presents his chapters as a series of almost au­ thor was leading his readers. revolutionary activist, and proto-feminist.