Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar earlier version, Robin Hood good-humoredly refuses further combat; in both earlier and later versions Robin invites him to join the band. Howard Pyle used this tale in his "The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood" as part of the tale of Alan-a-Dale: Robin needed a priest who would perform the wedding ceremony in defiance of authority, and Will Scarlet proposed Friar Tuck. The Percy Folio version of the ballad begins with the stanza: Robert Graves in his "English and Scottish Ballads" used this stanza to support his argument for pagan survivals in the Robin Hood legend, and for the popular survival
Robin Hood his nobles had impersonated "Robyn Hodes men" as part of his "Maying" in 1510. Robin Hood is known to have appeared in a number of other lost and extant Elizabethan plays. In 1599, the play "George a Green, the Pinner of Wakefield" places Robin Hood in the reign of Edward IV. "Edward I", a play by George Peele first performed in 1590-1, incorporates a Robin Hood game played by the characters. Lleweleyn, the last independent Prince of Wales, is presented playing Robin Hood. Fixing the Robin Hood story to the 1190s had been first proposed by John Major in his