Maid Marian

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

Maid Marion (short for maiden) usually named Lady Marian Fitzwalter of Leaford (first mentioned c.1200-1400), is the female companion to the legendary English outlaw Robin Hood. 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) [3] 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.[4]

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.[5]

Marion, indeed, remained associated with such celebrations long after the fashion of Robin Hood faded again.[6]

Many early Robin Hood tales deal with Robin's devotion to the Virgin Mary (such as in Robin Hood and the Monk).This aspect of the character slowly vanishes as Maid Marian makes her way into the tales.[citation needed] This, combined with Marian's initial status as a 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'.[7] Clorinda survives in some later stories as an alias of Marian.[8]

[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, Anthony Munday made her a pseudonym of Matilda Fitzwalter,[9] the historical daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, who had to flee England because of an attempt to assassinate King John. This was legendarily attributed to King John's attempts to seduce Matilda.[10] The ballad of Robin Hood and Maid Marian which dates at least to the 17th Century presents a more active Marion who disguises herself as a page and (unrecognized) holds her own against Robin himself in a sword fight. [11]

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;[12] in The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, she, though a lady-in-waiting to Eleanor of Aquitaine during the Crusades, is a mischievous tomboy capable of escaping over the countryside disguised as a boy.[13] 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.

Marian's actual connection to the Plantagenet royals tends to vary. Generally she is depicted as a high-ranking lady of the court. In the famous Errol Flynn film, she is a ward of the court, an orphaned noblewoman under the protection of King Richard. In the Kevin Costner epic Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, she is a maternal cousin to the sovereign while in the BBC TV Show adaption of 2006, she is the daughter of the former Sheriff and was betrothed to Robin prior to him leaving for the Holy Land. Possibly the oddest connection is found in the animated Disney Robin Hood; it is stated that Maid Marian is King Richard's niece, even though she is depicted as a fox and he as a lion, and Maid Marian is not treated as a royal although she does live in Nottingham Castle.

[edit] Literature

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

There have been several books based on the fictional character:

  • Maid Marian — 1821 novel by Thomas Love Peacock
  • Maid Marian — 2004 novel by Elsa Watson
  • Lady of the Forest; novel by Jennifer Roberson
  • Lady of Sherwood; novel by Jennifer Roberson
  • The Forestwife (and its sequels, although she's only the main character in the first); young adult novel by Theresa Tomlinson.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog Archie Comics feature a character named Mari-An, who is clearly based on Maid Marian, though she is an anthropomorphic echidna.
  • "Outlaws of Sherwood", novel by Robin McKinley (depicts Marian as a crack-shot archer)
  • Maid Marian appears in a chapter of T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, the first book in The Once and Future King. Wart (the young King Arthur) and his half brother Kay meet her and Robin when they go into the forest for an adventure and set out with the outlaws to rescue people Morgan le Fey kidnapped. When they meet her, it is quickly made apparent that Marian is strong and capable in battle and the narrator mentions that she could walk or even wiggle on her stomach like a snake faster than the boys could follow.
  • The "Robin & Marian Mysteries" by Clayton Emery, appearing in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and elsewhere, feature the outlaw husband-wife team as amateur detectives solving bizarre murders.

[edit] Television

[edit] Movies

[edit] Music

[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. ^ pp.11-12, Knight
  4. ^ Jeffrey Richards, Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York, p 190, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lond, Henly and Boston, 1988
  5. ^ Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, p 270-1, ISBN 0-19-288045-4
  6. ^ Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun, p 274, ISBN 0-19-288045-4
  7. ^ Holt, J. C. Robin Hood p 165 (1982) Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27541-6.
  8. ^ Allen W. Wright, "A Beginner's Guide to Robin Hood"
  9. ^ Additional discussion of the story of Matilda and how it changed to Maid Marion is available in Thomson, Richard (1829). An Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of King John: To which are Added the Great Charter in Latin and English. London: J. Major and R. Jennings. pp. 505–507. 
  10. ^ Allen W. Wright, The Search for the Real Robin Hood
  11. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1888. [1]
  12. ^ Jeffrey Richards, Swordsmen of the Screen: From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York, p 200, Routledge & Kegan Paul, Lond, Henly and Boston, 1988
  13. ^ 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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