A.O. Scott reviews the new Robin Hood movie for New York Times . Not a bad review, really, but then there was this, in passing:
The anti-French animus of “Robin Hood” is amusingly over the top—the French monarch is first glimpsed slurping oysters—but also perhaps a little anachronistic, belonging less to 1200 than to 2003, the height of the Freedom Fries era.
Anachronistic , the English sneer at the French? Because such mockery really dates from 2003?
Get this man to an English history class. Or to a performance of The Merchant of Venice , for that matter:
Nerissa:
How say you by the French lord, Monsieur Le Bon?Portia:
God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.
In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker: but,
he! why, he hath a horse better than the
Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit of frowning than
the Count Palatine; he is every man in no man; if a
throstle sing, he falls straight a capering: he will
fence with his own shadow: if I should marry him, I
should marry twenty husbands. If he would despise me
I would forgive him, for if he love me to madness, I
shall never requite him.
