Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 1465–1560: Texts, Contexts, and Ideology (review)

Two issues have dominated Robin Hood studies for the past half century. Historians have sought the ‘real’ Robin Hood in archives and in references to people, places, and events in the early poems. Literary critics have tended to dismiss this path through the Greenwood as an impossible quest, choosing instead to interrogate the social and cultural identity of the audiences that read and listened to those early poems. Thomas Ohlgren’s new book deliberately avoids the first question to concentrate on the material reality of the poems as a means of uncovering their intertextual and cultural contexts. In so doing, he produces a fascinating and provocative revision of prevailing views on dating, ownership, and provenance.

The texts central to this study are the earliest extant Robin Hood poems in manuscript known as Robin Hood and the Monk (Cambridge University Library MS Ff.5.48) and Robin Hood and the Potter (Cambridge University Library MS Ee.4.35) and the earliest Robin Hood poem in print, A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode, which survives in seven whole or fragmentary editions. In the case of the first two, Ohlgren provides the fullest and most reliable descriptions of the physical condition and appearance of the manuscripts to date. He further details the contents of the manuscript miscellanies in which the Robin Hood poems are embedded and explores the meaning and consequences of interpreting the inscriptions of ownership. He locates Gilbert Pilkington, owner of Robin Hood and the Monk, as an ordained priest from the diocese of Lichfield and his acquisition or copying of the poem as post 1465. Richard Call, owner of Robin Hood and the Potter, is assumed to be the chief bailiff of the Norfolk family of Pastons and the date of the manuscript, on the basis of the list of food prepared for the marriage banquet of Margaret Tudor and Charles, duke of Burgundy, included in the miscellany, as 1468. This predates previous estimates of the manuscript by some 30 years.

A similar review is made of the names that appear in the Wynkyn de Worde edition of A Lytell Gest of Robyn Hode and the other texts with which it was originally bound. One of those claiming ownership was a woman. Ohlgren identifies her as Audrey Holman born about 1573 with parents from neighbouring villages in Surrey and an older brother who became a wealthy grocer and citizen of London. Such information adds enormously to our understanding of the ownership and readership of the early Robin Hood poems. Equally important for Robin Hood scholars is Ohlgren’s indispensable and careful bibliographical analysis of the seven editions of the poem. He convincingly revises the chronology of the editions—though it should be noted that on page 98 the publication date for the Copland edition should be 1560 and not, as given, 1550—and provides the most complete concordance of the text available.

This scrutiny of the poems as physical objects is a necessary and valuable contribution to Robin Hood scholarship. The distinction with which it is carried out might lull the unwary reader into accepting the contextual, cultural, and ideological findings that follow as equally certain and confident. Ohlgren seeks to establish ways in which the occupational and personal interests of the different owners and users might be addressed in the poems. This is more speculative territory. He sees Pilkington’s miscellany as a clerical compilation containing didactic messages suitable for use in sermons with Robin Hood and the Monk as an exploration of the ideological conflict between secular and regular clergy. Robin Hood and the Potter forms part of what is described as a ‘household miscellany’ and its appeal to Richard Call is seen to reside in its opposition to the monopolistic and restrictive practices of town economies. This is, perhaps, too reductive. Ohlgren treats each poem...