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A review by merlandese
The Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle
3.0
Much more fun than I expected, and different, too. I know so much Robin Hood stuff, but it's all mostly modernized stuff: he's a fallen noble, or he's back from the crusades, and he's a hero among the average man!
But here, in these old folktales, Robin is barely a hero among the average man. He does some charity, he has his quirks, but mostly he's just a Peter Pan man in the Lost Sherwoods, having fun and doing whatever makes him happy. And usually, this mean picking on strangers for no reason!
This is mostly a collection of short stories that, if I were to make an analogue to a more modern media, would play like a Saturday Morning Cartoon where each episode wraps up in 25 minutes, there are no real morals or profound ideas to be heard of, and the same thing will happen next week but slightly different. The majority of the first half of the book plays out like this:
- Robin (or Little John) is a mischevious jerk to a stranger
- The stranger almost beats Robin (or Little John) down to size
- That person gets recruited into the Merry men
It's all very playful, relaxed, and lighthearted storytelling. Even the "gives to the poor" is seen less as some driving morality to admire and more of just a quirk of this particular bandit. Some bandits kill, some steal, some are loners, some live in the woods with a bunch of dudes. Robin Hood is pure Chaotic Neutral. Sometimes he'll take you for all you're worth and sometimes he'll give you a hand. I really love the idea that his main modus aperandi is dragging a rich person into the woods by force, having a dope feast with food and games and ale and just plain showing the person the best time of their life, before charging them all their money on the way out.
Glad to get this new (or rather, old) angle on Robin Hood. Reading these stories gave me a ton of appreciation for the lore that I didn't know I wanted.
But here, in these old folktales, Robin is barely a hero among the average man. He does some charity, he has his quirks, but mostly he's just a Peter Pan man in the Lost Sherwoods, having fun and doing whatever makes him happy. And usually, this mean picking on strangers for no reason!
This is mostly a collection of short stories that, if I were to make an analogue to a more modern media, would play like a Saturday Morning Cartoon where each episode wraps up in 25 minutes, there are no real morals or profound ideas to be heard of, and the same thing will happen next week but slightly different. The majority of the first half of the book plays out like this:
- Robin (or Little John) is a mischevious jerk to a stranger
- The stranger almost beats Robin (or Little John) down to size
- That person gets recruited into the Merry men
It's all very playful, relaxed, and lighthearted storytelling. Even the "gives to the poor" is seen less as some driving morality to admire and more of just a quirk of this particular bandit. Some bandits kill, some steal, some are loners, some live in the woods with a bunch of dudes. Robin Hood is pure Chaotic Neutral. Sometimes he'll take you for all you're worth and sometimes he'll give you a hand. I really love the idea that his main modus aperandi is dragging a rich person into the woods by force, having a dope feast with food and games and ale and just plain showing the person the best time of their life, before charging them all their money on the way out.
Glad to get this new (or rather, old) angle on Robin Hood. Reading these stories gave me a ton of appreciation for the lore that I didn't know I wanted.