"Tho' (then) Robin Hood, liell John, frier Tucke,
And Marian, deftly play,
And lord and ladie gang till kirke
With lads and lasses gay:
Fra masse and een sang sa gud cheere
And glee on ery greene."[160:A]
These four characters, therefore, Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian, although no constituent parts of the original English morris, became at length so blended with it, especially on the festival of May-day, that until the practice of archery was nearly laid aside, they continued to be the most essential part of the pageantry.
In consequence of this arrangement, "the old Robin Hood of England," as Shakspeare calls him[160:B], was created the King or Lord of the May, and sometimes carried in his hand, during the May-game, a painted standard.[160:C] It was no uncommon circumstance, likewise, for metrical interludes, of a comic species, and founded on the achievements of this outlaw, to be performed after the morris, on the May-pole green. In Garrick's Collection of Old Plays, occurs one, entitled "A mery Geste of Robyn Hoode, and of hys Lyfe, wyth a newe Playe for to be played in Maye-Games, very pleasaunte and full of pastyme;" it is printed at London, in the black letter, for William Copland, and has figures in the title page of Robin Hood and Lytel John.[160:D] Shakspeare appears to allude to these interludes when he represents Fabian, in the Twelfth Night, exclaiming on the approach of Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek with his challenge, "More matter for May-morning."[160:E]
Upon this introduction of Robin Hood and his companions into the celebration of May-day, his paramour Maid Marian, assumed the office of the former Queen of May. This far-famed lady has, according to Mr. Ritson, no part in the original and more authentic history of Robin Hood; but seems to have been first brought forward when the story of this hero became dramatised, which was at a very early period in this country; and Mr. Douce is of opinion that the name, which is a stranger to English history, has been taken from "a pretty French pastoral drama of the eleventh or twelfth century, entitled Le jeu du berger et de la bergere, in which the principal characters are Robin and Marian, a shepherd and shepherdess."[161:A] This appears the more probable, as the piece was not only very popular in France, but performed at the season when the May-games took place in England.
Maid Marian, in the days of Shakspeare, was usually represented by a delicate, smooth-faced youth, who was dressed in all the fashionable finery of the times; and this assumption of the female garb gave, not without some reason, great offence to the puritanical dissenters, one of whom, exclaiming against the amusements of May-day, notices this, amongst some other abuses, in the following very curious passage:—"The abuses which are committed in your May-games are infinite. The first whereof is this, that you doe use to attyre in woman's apparrell whom you doe most commonly call may-marrions, whereby you infringe that straight commandment whiche is given in Deut. xxii. 5., that men must not put on women's apparrell for feare of enormities. Nay I myself have seene in a may game a troupe, the greater part whereof hath been men, and yet have they been attyred so like into women, that their faces being hidde (as they were indeede) a man coulde not discerne them from women. The second abuse, which of all other is the greatest, is this, that it hath been toulde that your morice dauncers have dannced naked in nettes: what greater enticement unto naughtiness could have been devised? The third