Robin Hood version of Robin Hood's life. In reaching his conclusion Ritson relied or gave weight to a number of unreliable sources, such as the Robin Hood plays of Anthony Munday, and the Sloane Manuscript. Nevertheless, Dobson and Taylor credit Ritson with having 'an incalculable effect in promoting the still continuing quest for the man behind the myth', and note that his work remains an 'indispensable handbook to the outlaw legend even now'. Ritson's friend Walter Scott used Ritson's anthology collection as a source for his picture of Robin Hood in Ivanhoe, written in 1818, which did much to shape the modern
Robin Hood in some later stories as an alias of Marian. The earliest preserved script of a Robin Hood play is the fragmentary "Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham" This apparently dates to the 1470s and circumstantial evidence suggests it was probably performed at the household of Sir John Paston. This fragment appears to tell the story of Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne. There is also an early playtext appended to a 1560 printed edition of the Gest. This includes a dramatic version of the story of Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar and a version of the first part