Robin Hood plays should be banned, wrote an advisor to King Henry VIII in 1536 – they were, he argued, teaching the public how to defy the king’s officers. It was basically the medieval equivalent of claiming video games make kids violent, part of a longstanding movement to ban performances and tales of Robin Hood. This hero was really a villain, these medieval campaigners complained.

A new film out tomorrow, The Death of Robin Hood, echoes this claim. Set in the far north of England in the year 1247, the film sees a wounded Robin Hood (Hugh Jackman), a “wicked and murderous bandit”, reflect on his life of crime. “He was no hero,” claims the film’s tagline.

But in our time of cost-of-living crises and rising authoritarianism, do we need a villainous Robin Hood? One Reddit comment summed it up nicely: “Not sure I love the idea of tearing down a folk hero who fought against wealth inequality and greed from upper classes in the current era we’re in. Feels pretty tone deaf.”

The optics aren’t great. This hero-to-villain recasting comes in the wake of Jackman’s performance at Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday earlier this year, attended by members of the Trump family.

But do the film’s claims about Robin Hood’s villainous origins even stack up? What is the truth behind the legend?

The history of Robin Hood

We first see literary references to Robin Hood in the 1370s, when poet William Langland wrote that rhymes and romances of Robin Hood were shared in taverns. Soon after, around 1405, a literary commentary on the Ten Commandments, framed as a conversation between a rich man and a poor man, complained that people would rather go to the pub to hear a tale of Robin Hood than attend church services.

The earliest known Robin Hood narrative survives within a critical source that rubbishes Robin’s popular appeal: Scotichronicon, compiled in the 1440s by Scottish abbot Walter Bower. The chronicle was a rejection of English claims over Scottish sovereignty. Bower emphasised both the piety of the Scottish church........

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