Shakespeare and Robin Hood: Silence and Noyes

“To re-enter the greenwood after twenty years is a somewhat daunting task. Obviously one should not march determinedly over the same old track, yet must avoid getting lost in new mazes” (Gray in Potter, ed., 21). With Douglas Gray’s sage words and advice on my mind, I will start by reopening an issue broached twenty three years ago in my PhD dissertation (1996): Shakespeare’s scanty references to Robin Hood and his legendary outlaw circle. I will then change scenes, from the Elizabethan to the late Edwardian-early Georgian age, and briefly present Alfred Noyes’s 'Sherwood, or Robin Hood and the Three Kings', a play first published in the US in 1911 and in Britain in 1926.