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 "Historia Majoris Britanniæ" (1521), (and he also may have been influenced in so doing by the story of Fulk Fitz Warin) This was the period in which King Richard was absent from the country, fighting in the Third Crusade. William Shakespeare makes reference to Robin Hood in his late-16th-century play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". In it, the character Valentine is banished from Milan and driven out through the forest where he is approached by outlaws who, upon meeting him, desire him as their leader. They comment, 'By the bare scalp of Robin Hood's fat friar, This fellow were a