SOURCE: Meagher, John C. “Hackwriting and the Huntingdon Plays.” In Elizabethan Theatre, edited by John Russell Brown and Bernard Harris, pp. 197-219. London: Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd., 1966.

In the following essay, Meagher examines Munday's Robin Hood plays for what they reveal of Elizabethan popular taste.

By the late 1590's, the theatrical entertainment of the London populace had become a substantial business, and most of the trade was divided between two dramatic companies, the Chamberlain's Men and the Admiral's Men. We know little about whatever pressure the public might have exerted for quality in the plays they presented, but the survival of the diary of Philip Henslowe, the financier of the Admiral's Men, reveals a decided pressure for variety; in a typical fortnight in 1597 the Admiral's Men gave twelve performances which presented eight to ten different plays, of which one might be new and another might be appearing for...