Maid Marian

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Robin Hood and Maid Marian (poster, ca. 1880)
Robin Hood and Maid Marian (poster, ca. 1880)

Maid Marian is the female companion to the legendary figure Robin Hood. Although stemming from another, older tradition, she became associated with Robin Hood only in the sixteenth century.[1]

Contents

[edit] History

The earliest Medieval Robin Hood stories gave him no female companion. The Robin Hood character at this time was a rather brutish woodsman and a female companion would have been out of place.[2]

Maid Marian was originally a character in May Games festivities (held during May and early June, most commonly around Whitsun) (Knight pp.11-12) and is sometimes associated with the Queen or Lady of May of May Day. She became associated with Robin Hood in this context, as Robin Hood became a central figure in May Day, associated as it was with the forest and archery. Both Robin and Marian were certainly associated with May Day festivities in England (as was Friar Tuck); these were originally two distinct types of performance — Alexander Barclay, writing in c.1500, refers to "some merry fytte of Maid Marian or else of Robin Hood" — but the characters were brought together.[3]

Marian is likely derived from the French tradition of a shepherdess named Marion and her shepherd lover Robin (not Robin Hood). The best known example of this tradition is Adam de la Halle's Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, circa 1283.[4]

Marion, indeed, remained associated with such celebrations long after the fashion of Robin Hood faded again.[5]

Many early Robin Hood tales deal with Robin's devotion to the Virgin Mary (such as in Robin Hood and the Monk), but this aspect of the character vanishes as Maid Marian makes her way into the tales. This, combined with Marian's initial status as a virginal maid, suggests another possible origin for the character.

Marian did not immediately gain the unquestioned role as Robin's love; in Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, Valor and Marriage, his sweetheart is 'Clorinda the Queen of the Shepherdesses'.[6] Clorinda survives in some later stories as an alias of Marian.[7]

[edit] Character

In narrative terms, Maid Marian was first attached to Robin Hood in the late sixteenth century as Robin was gentrified and given a virginal maid to pine after. Her biography and character have been highly variable over the centuries, being sometimes portrayed as a pagan or Saxon and other times as a high born Norman. (Marian's role was not entirely virginal in the early days. In 1592, Thomas Nashe described the Marian of the later May Games as being played by a male actor named Martin, and there are hints in the play of Robin Hood and the Friar that the female character in these plays had become a lewd parody.)

In an Elizabethan play, Alexander Munday made her a pseudonym of Matilda Fitzwalter, the historical daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, who had to flee England because an attempt to assassinate King John. This was legendarily attributed to King John's attempts to seduce Matilda.[8]

In the Victorian Era she reverted to her previous role as the dainty maid. This highborn woman appears in many movies, under various characters: in The Adventures of Robin Hood, she is a courageous and loyal woman, whose initial antagonism to Robin springs not from aristocratic disdain but out of dislike of robbery;[9] in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, she, though a lady-in-waiting to Eleanor of Acquaitaine during the Crusades, is a mischievous tomboy capable of escaping over the countryside disguised as a boy.[10] With the rise of modern feminism in the 20th century, the character has often been depicted as an adventurer again, sometimes as a crack archer herself. In modern times, a common ending for Robin Hood stories became that he married Maid Marian and left the woods for a civilized, aristocratic life.

[edit] Literature

Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood giving Enid Bennett as Maid Marian a dagger
Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood giving Enid Bennett as Maid Marian a dagger

There have been several books based on the fictional character:

[edit] Television

  • Maid Marian was the lead character in Tony Robinson's BBC children's comedy Maid Marian and her Merry Men. In the show, Marian was portrayed as the real leader of the Merry Men, whilst Robin was a vain coward who had become the leader by accident.
  • in the 1980s HTV show Robin of Sherwood, Marian was played by Judi Trott, and after meeting and falling in love with Robin, lived with him and the other outlaws in Sherwood Forest.
  • In Blackadder: Back & Forth, Maid Marian is portrayed by supermodel Kate Moss.
  • In the BBC's 2006 version Robin Hood, Marian is played by Lucy Griffiths, and called Lady Marian, as opposed to Maid Marian. In this version of the tale, she is daughter of the old Sheriff of Nottingham. Head-strong and feisty, she is disgusted by the current Sheriff's schemes, and disguises herself as the Nightwatchman to deliver food to the poor. She is also shown as a talented archer. At one time Robin Hood's fiancee, their relationship is rocky after he returns from the crusades, and she is soon forced into an engagement with the Sheriff's second-in-command, Guy of Gisborne. She often feeds Robin information which helps him to outsmart and defeat the Sheriff's various plots.
  • Maid Marian was played by first by Bernadette O'Farrell, and then by Patricia Driscoll in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

[edit] Movies

[edit] References

  1. ^ Holt, J. C. Robin Hood p 37 (1982) Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27541-6.
  2. ^ Jeffrey Richards, Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York, p 190, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lond, Henly and Boston, 1988
  3. ^ Jeffrey Richards, Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York, p 190, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lond, Henly and Boston, 1988
  4. ^ Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, p 270-1, ISBN 0-19-288045-4
  5. ^ Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, p 274, ISBN 0-19-288045-4
  6. ^ Holt, J. C. Robin Hood p 165 (1982) Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27541-6.
  7. ^ Allen W. Wright, "A Beginner's Guide to Robin Hood"
  8. ^ Allen W. Wright, The Search for the Real Robin Hood
  9. ^ Jeffrey Richards, Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York, p 200, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lond, Henly and Boston, 1988
  10. ^ Jeffrey Richards, Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York, p 201, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lond, Henly and Boston, 1988
  • Knight, Stephen (2003) Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography. University of Cornell Press.

[edit] External links

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