Robinhood

Part of Justin's English cultural education involved a viewing of Robinhood: Prince of Thieves, Kevin Costner style. An all around great film, if you ask me, which you implicitly did because you are reading my blog. hahaha. Although there are two letter writing snippets in the movie, and it is integral enough in the plot to show the hand of a person writing.... upon seeing this bit of the film I said aloud, much to the amusement/annoyance of my fellow movie watchers, "ugh that is so culturally inaccurate to that time period, there is no way that someone would write with that manner of script during that period!"

Some background on that outburst: I recently partook in a few paleography courses where we took to deciphering texts from the Early Modern Period, well after the time of tale of Robinhood. It wasn't until after the 1600 did people begin to use italic and even then it was mostly women, men still sticking to the Elizabethan secretary hand until around 1650.

In addition to that there is a few geographic slips in the movie that Maddy and Kayleigh spotted such as landing on the white cliffs of Dover and almost instantaneously arriving on Haydrian's Wall (which is hours north, by car) Jim pointed out that tree on Haydrian's Wall is actually a Sycamore disguised as an Oak so that it could contain mistletoe as the dialogue of the movie dictates.

I am not sure why I felt like being such a myth buster when watching this particular Robinhood last Saturday. I hold complete suspension of disbelief when watching the Disney version, never seemed to have any qualms with a fox shooting a bow and arrow :o) You know you want to get that song stuck in your head, and maybe this one too. :o) Such a classic.