Where Robin Hood Gets Beat Up

The History of George a Green: Pindar of the Town of Wakefield by Robert Greene
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

George-a-Green is sorta fun to read, and it's not too hard to understand compared to other Elizabethan drama--but it's a crap play, IMO. Kinda messed up, actually. Continuity errors, plot holes, that sort of thing. But I still liked it some.

Lemme explain.

George-a-Green apparently was a famous character, a legendary hero like Robin Hood with lots of stories told about him. It makes sense that they would make a play about such a figure and stage it, and I bet it was fairly fun to see. But there wasn't enough material to make a single story, so they mashed a couple together. The first three acts involve a rebellion that George cuts short by sort of tricking then beating the rebel leaders one-on-one with his staff. His bravery, especially as a commoner facing noblemen, would have fired folks up, and a good fighting scene in a play never goes amiss. However, with that wrapped up, the final two acts switch to the story of Robin Hood picking a fight with George (goaded on by Maid Marian). Super anticlimactic. George defeats Robin and a couple of his merry men (all disguised), but nobody gets mad. George finds out who they really are, the whole bunch of them become friends, and they all go off to get drunk. The King of England shows up at about that time and rewards George for his bravery in the rebellion and tells his true love's father to let George marry her. Happy ending.

I've got ideas on how to fix the play, how to blend the separate arcs, but I'm about 500 years late to convince the writer (who probably wasn't Robert Greene, apparently). Oh, well.

I bet it got some laughs and a few patriotic cheers when it was performed, and those old time crowds would not have cared about my criticism even if they had known. Probably hit me with a stick.

View all my reviews