then to join the band.

The Elizabethan dramatists made good use of our hero, knowing well that
when he was presented on the stage the hearts of the people were moved.
In "a Pleasant Commedie called Looke About You", he appears as a
fresh-faced and pretty young nobleman, ever ready to do a good turn to
his friends, to whom everybody defers, and who passes through the play
laughing and merry as his namesake, the Goodfellow of Ben Jonson. So
rosy are his cheeks and so bright his eyes that he personates the
heroine, Lady Fauconbridge, at some unwelcome visits that she dreads.
_The Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon_, by Anthony Munday, who
wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, gives the next dramatic
information. This shows him living in full state, but still young, and
on the eve of marriage with Matilda Fitzwater, Lord Lacy's child. His
steward, Warman, instigated by the Prior of York, betrays him in
Judas-like fashion (for what real reason we are not told, if it be not
for the wasting of his lands), and as an outlaw he flies to the
greenwood, where he is joined by Matilda, who renounces her fine name
and calls herself Maid Marion. Prince John has fallen in love with her,
and she is in mortal fear of his pursuit. In this play Little John and
Friar Tuck converse prettily in an aside:--

_Little John._ Methinks I see no jest of Robin Hood,
No merry morrices of Friar Tuck,
No pleasant skippings up and down the wood,
No hunting songs, no coursings of the buck.

_Friar Tuck._ For merry jests they have been shown before,
As how the friar fell into the well
For love of Jenny, that fair bonny belle;
How Greenleaf robbed the Shrieve of Nottingham,
And other mirthful matters full of game.

These passages obviously refer to the antecedent plays. After this comes
_The Death of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon_, collaborated by the same
author with Henry Chettle, another successful playwright. This,
differing from the ballad account, shows how he was poisoned by his
uncle, the wicked prior. His obsequies are solemnized with a plaintive
little dirge:--

"Weep, weep, ye woodmen, wail,
Your hands with sorrow wring,
Your master Robin Hood lies dead,
Therefore sigh as you sing.

"Here lie his primer and his beads,
His bent bow and his arrows keen,
His go