Robert Henryson's Robene and Makyne (c.1470), the earliest surviving pastoral poem recorded in the English language, remains one of Henryson's best known works; “the excellence of this poem has long been recognized even by those who do not appreciate Henryson's other works” notes critic Robert Kindrick, and he is correct in that assessment. The comical story of the shepherdess Makyne's advances towards the reluctant shepherd Robene, and the ensuing reversal of fortune that finishes the work, have delighted audiences for centuries. Well-anthologized and studied often in British literature survey courses, Robene and Makyne, with its pithy nature, uncomplicated structure, comical subject material, and “charming” language, stands as a good example of the work of a poet often considered one of the last great medieval makars.

In terms of literary criticism, though, Robene and Makyne remains largely ignored by Henryson scholars and is considered a minor footnote to this poet's Testament of Cresseid and his Morall Fabillis, mainly because most critics are not sure how Robene and Makyne fits into the Henryson canon. Exemplifying the prevalent critical interpretation of the man and his works, Denton Fox labels Henryson a “dour moralist”; Henryson's conservatism, though, appears largely at odds with both the burlesque, almost bawdy, subject material of Robene and Makyne and the accepted moralitis (moral meaning) of the poem as found in lines 91–92: “The man that will nocht quhen he may / sall haif nocht quhen he wald” (the man that will not when he may / shall have not when he would).