RLS decided to employ the language of Shakespeare, in both dialogue and narrative, making it more difficult to read than it needed to be. The story is definitely an adventure, complete with lots of fighting (swords, arrows, daggers), stolen ships and pirates, castles, chases, disguises, and derring-do. Dick also kills one of Sir Daniel's men whom he discovers hiding behind the arras (aka curtain, but RLS insists it is an arras), spying on Joan and Dick during one of their rare trysts. He loses opportunity after opportunity for vengeance with his dithering. He feels he must avenge his father but first has to prove that Sir Daniel is guilty. Dick discovers that Sir Daniel, his guardian, is responsible for his father's murder. Not only is The Black Arrow a Robin Hood story, but it's also a Hamlet story.
To complete the cast, there is a fat friar, outlaws called Lawless and Greensheave, and all are, of course, first rate archers who shoot, you guessed it, black arrows, which are their calling card. Maid Marion is Joan Sedley, who Dick first meets when she is disguised as a boy and calls herself Jack-she is brave, witty, lovely, and devoted to Dick. The outlaws are led by Ellis Duckworth, a worthy who is robbed of his lands by the evil, grasping Sir Daniel Blakeley-a shoe-in for the Sheriff of Notingham if there ever was one. Yes, The Black Arrow is basically a Robin Hood story, set during the War of the Roses, and the hero, Dick Shelton, actually meets Richard III, when he was still Duke of Gloucester, before his brother Edward was crowned Edward IV. One of my brothers nailed boards to the trunk for stairs and I would spend a lot of my play time up in the tree, pretending I was living with a pack of outlaws in Merry England in the trees and wearing Lincoln Green. One of my older brothers must have read the book, or a Classic Comics version, or somehow learned the story and told me the basic outline because I remember playing it in the big maple tree in our front yard.
I have wanted to read The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson, since I was a little kid.
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