Mi Contra Fa

Robin Hood: Documentation

I'm not seeing extensive documentation for this.  We should reference the sources that provided the original poem and some commentary on it - the 'Rymes' book and the Kalamazoo web page I linked to in an earlier post.  The play post-dates the ballad, and seems to descend from it, but I've got no sources that indicate ballads were enacted as sung dramas. 

I can cite "Stations of the Sun" on the Robin Hood cycles being heavily associated with the May Games and transgressive behavior, to support a comedic presentation. 

...yeeeah.  I haven't really done any research into the staging of medieval or Tudor drama, so this is definitely a case of, "Look, this is a period source, which makes this a period performance, right?"  So I'll just cop to the fact that the performance itself is based on air and fairy dust and our own opinions, but that some kind of Robin Hood dramas were staged in the 1500-1600 timeframe.

Robin Hood: Cut down to size

Lady Patricia pointed out that, while "The Hunt is Up" starts on a pickup, not every line in "Robin Hood and the Potter" does.  I think this is readily solved by dropping the pickup for those verses that don't have it.

This does present a problem for the instruments - or it would, if they were echoing the melody.  Glancing over the ballad, it's very typical in that, to make everything fit, the pickup will sometimes be dropped and other notes will sometimes be subdivided.  Plus, "The Hunt is Up" contains a few melismas, and it's not always going to be clear where they ought to go.  My intuition is to give the instruments a simpler accompaniment, more like guitar chords, that won't get hung up on the singer(s) or speaker(s) fiddling with the melodic particulars here and there.

Now, the text needs two adjustments: it could probably stand to be cut down a bit, firstly, and secondly, the parts with speech by John, Robin and the potter should be rewritten so that the narrator and characters aren't intercutting each other.