In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws and their trade;"
Maid Marian, the mistress of Robin; the Fool, who was like the domestic buffoon of the time, with motley dress, the cap and bells, and additional bells tied to his arms and ankles; the Piper, sometimes called Tom Piper, the musician of the troop; and the Hobby-horse, represented by a man equipped with a pasteboard frame forming the head and hinder parts of a horse, with a long mantle or footcloth reaching nearly to the ground, to hide the man's legs; and the Dragon, another pasteboard device, much like the one in the Riding of Saint George described above (page 169). In addition to these characters there were a number of common dancers, in fantastic costume, with bells about their feet.
The forms and number of the characters varied much with time and place. Sometimes only one or two of those just mentioned were introduced in the dance, and sometimes others were added.
During the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans, by their sermons and invectives, did much to interfere with this feature of the May-day games. Friar Tuck was deemed a remnant of Popery, and the Hobby-horse an impious superstition. The opposition to them became so bitter that they were generally omitted from the sport. Allusions to the omission of the Hobby-horse are frequent in the plays of the time; as in Love's Labour's Lost (iii. 1. 30): "The hobby-horse is forgot;" and Hamlet (iii. 2. 142): "or else he shall suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, 'For, O, for, O, the hobby-horse is forgot.'" This "epitaph" (which is also referred to in Love's Labour's Lost) appears to be a quotation from some popular song of the time. So in Beaumont and Fletcher's Women Pleased (iv. 1.) we find: "Shall the hobby-horse be forgot then?" and in Ben Jonson's Entertainment at Althorp: "But see, the hobby-horse is forgot."
Friar Tuck is alluded to by Shakespeare in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (iv. 1. 36), where one of the Outlaws who have seized Valentine exclaims:—
"By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar,
This fellow were a king for our wild faction!"
That he kept his place in the morris-dance in the reign of Elizabeth is evident from Warner's Albion's England, published in 1586: "Tho' Robin Hood, little John, friar Tuck, and Marian deftly play"; but he is not heard of afterwards. In Ben Jonson's Masque of the Gipsies, written about 1620, the Clown notes his absence from the dance: "There is no Maid Marian nor Friar amongst them."
Maid Marian also officiated as the Queen or Lady of the May, who had figured in the May-day festivities long before Robin Hood was introduced into them. She was probably at first the representative of the goddess Flora in the ancient Roman festival celebrated at the same season of the year.
Maid Marian was sometimes personated by a young woman, but oftener by a boy or young man in feminine dress. Later, when the morris-dance had degenerated into coarse foolery, the part was taken by a clown. In 1 Henry IV. (iii. 3. 129), Falstaff refers contemptuously to "Maid Marian" as a low character, which she had doubtless become by the time (1596 or 1597) when that play was written.