|
Robin Hood
History
May Games
Friar Tuck
Maid Marian
True Story
King John
|
 Friar Tuck is one of the best-known members of Robin Hood's band,
but like Maid Marian, he is not present in the earliest ballads. And
both Tuck and Marian only have one major appearance in any Robin
Hood ballad, although there is a passing reference in a couple of
others.
But while Tuck and Marian didn't appear in the surviving early
ballads, they were characters in the 15th - 17th century village
festivals May Games that often featured a Robin Hood play.
Tuck's first appearance as a fighting member of Robin's band
comes from a dramatic fragment from 1475, but there he is just
another outlaw. An earlier version of this story is also a May Game
play, printed in 1560 alongside another play adapting an older
ballad about Robin Hood and the Potter.
At the end of that play, Robin offers Tuck a woman as incentive
to join the band although unnamed, many scholars have assumed that
woman was meant to be Marian. |
