THE ELIZABETHAN FAIRIES

230 ROBIN GOODFELLOW
E~ithalamion,~~ and in Fidele and Fortuni~,~~ where the
names, hobgoblin, and Robin Goodfellow, or Hobgoblin
occur, each term is used to denote a separate spirit, as
for example, " Robin goodfellowe, Hobgoblin, the deuill
and his dam." 46
Especially is the difference between the two beings ap-
parent in Churchyard's Handful1 of Gladsome Verses
which celebrates in the same poem old Hobgobling,
" That walked like ghost in sheets," and " Rude Robin
Goodfellow, the lout." 47
Although Shakespeare's designation of Robin Good-
fellow as a fairy and as Puck, both in A Midsummer
Night's Dream and in Merry Wives of Windsor, was of
the utmost influence upon Robin Goodfellow's subse-
quent literary career and final degradation, and ulti-
mately, accepted as the proper name and race of Robin
Go~dfellow,~~ in the main, in the 16th and early 17th
centuries, he was given no special racial name or connection,
but as goblin, or satyr, or devil, or mortal, was
known and represented, as Reginald Scot and the anonymous
author of Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie had
represented him - as an individual hero and country
spirit given to domestic occupations and "pleasantly
disposed."
No writers of the period have better reproduced the
spirit in which he was regarded and the personality with
which he was invested than have Ben Jonson and
44 Line 343.
46 [Anthony Munday], Malone Society Reprints, 1909, 1. 566.
46 Fidele and Fortunio, 1. 566.
47 Rpt. in E. K. Chambers, " Fairy World," p. 164. Cf. also R. G.
White, Works of William Shakespeare, 1865, Vol. IV, Introd., p. 13.
See Jonson, Greg ed., Sad Shepherd, Cast of characters; Heywood,
Hierarchie, Book g; Butler, Hudibras, p. 371; Drayton, Nimphidia;
Corbet, Iter Boreale; Die Maske won Cole-Orton.