Robin Hood

1. Robin Hood

People have told stories about Robin Hood for more than 700 years. Nobody knows if he was a real person or an invented character. In the legends, Robin was extremely intelligent and had a playful sense of humour. He loved playing tricks onpeople.
  
 The stories say that Robin Hood was a skilled archer and he always carried a bow and arrow.
  
 He wore green clothes and a hat with a green feather. He lived in Sherwood Forest with a group of outlaws, or criminals, known as his ‘Merry Men’. The group included Friar Tuck, Little John, who was unusually tall, ‘Little is just my nickname!’, and Robin’s true love, Maid Marian.
  
 Sherwood Forest was a royal hunting forest near Nottingham in England. Most people thought that forests were dangerous places to go. People travelling through the forests were often robbed by outlaws.
  
 ‘Your money, please, my Lord!’
  
 ‘Oh no, it’s Robin Hood!’
  
 The stories say that Robin Hood only took money from rich people so that he could give it to people who needed it. So he became famous for ‘robbing from the rich and giving to the poor’.
  
  ‘Here you are, my dear.’
  
 ‘Oh, thank you, Robin!’
  
 The Sheriff of Nottingham was Robin’s arch-enemy. It was the sheriff’s job to keep the woods safe and to make sure that nobody stole the king’s deer. 
  
 The Sheriff of Nottingham tried to catch Robin Hood, but never succeeded.
  
 Centuries ago people loved to tell each other stories of Robin Hood. Later he became a famous character in books, and nowadays Robin is still a well-loved hero in literature, theatre, TV and films.

2. 《Robin Hood》内容梗概

Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero; a courteous, pious and swashbuckling outlaw of the medieval era who, in modern versions of the legend, is famous for robbing the rich to feed the poor and fighting against injustice and tyranny. He operates with his "seven score" (140 strong) group of fellow outlawed yeomen – called his "Merry Men". Robin Hood and his band are usually associated with Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. He has been the subject of numerous movies, books, comics and plays. 

In many stories Robin's nemesis is the Sheriff of Nottingham. In the oldest legends, this is merely because a sheriff is an outlaw's natural enemy, but in later versions, the despotic sheriff gravely abuses his position, appropriating land, levying intolerable taxation, and unfairly persecuting the poor. In some tales the antagonist is Prince John, based on John of England, seen as the unjust usurper of his pious brother Richard. In the oldest versions surviving, Robin Hood is a yeoman, but in some versions he is said to have been a nobleman, the earl of Loxley (Locksley), who was unjustly deprived of his lands. Sometimes he has served in the crusades, returning to England to find his lands pillaged by the dastardly sheriff. In some tales he is the champion of the people, fighting against corrupt officials and the oppressive order that protects them, while in others he is an arrogant and headstrong rebel, who delights in bloodshed, cruelly slaughtering and beheading his victims. 

In point of fact, Robin Hood stories are different in every period of their history. Robin himself is continually reshaped and redrawn, made to exemplify whatever values are deemed important by the storyteller at the time. The figure is less a personage and more of an amalgam of the various ideas his "life" has been structured to support.