23. The Gentrification of Robin Hood
The medieval outlaw Robin Hood is one of England’s greatest folklore figures. Unsurprisingly, considering how just how engaging his legend is: robbing the rich to give to the poor; fighting the Sheriff of Nottingham and the evil King John; and helping the rightful monarch Richard the Lionheart regain his throne. Surprisingly, for a story whose centerpiece was stealing from the rich, Robin Hood first gained widespread popularity because of plays originally staged for the upper classes in Elizabethan England.
However, Elizabethan playwrights had to first gentrify Robin Hood from a commoner bandit, and transform him into a nobleman to whom the well-heeled could better relate. Such gentrification can be traced to the playwright Anthony Mundy, who reinvented the outlaw as an aristocrat, Earl Robert of Huntington, who was wrongfully disinherited by his uncle. So he flees to Sherwood Forrest where he becomes an outlaw, meets and falls in love with Lady Marion, and kicks off the legend.
