Robin is thus characterised in The Midsummer Night’s Dream by a female fairy:—
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are you not he
That fright the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk; and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck.”
To these questions Robin thus replies:—
“Thou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile,
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometimes lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab;
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob,
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor,’ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips, and laugh;
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear,
A merrier hour was never wasted there.”
His usual exclamation in this play is Ho, ho, ho!
“Ho, ho, ho! Coward, why com’st thou not?”
So in Grim, the Collier of Croydon:—
“Ho, ho, ho! my masters! No good fellowship!
Is Robin Goodfellow a bugbear grown,
That he is not worthy to be bid sit down?”