The Strange History Of Sir John Oldcastle

Author : William Shakespeare
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781502733672
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (336 download)

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Download or read book The True and Honorable History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle written by William Shakespeare and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir John Oldcastle is an Elizabethan play about John Oldcastle, a controversial 14th-15th century rebel and Lollard who was seen by some of Shakespeare's contemporaries as a proto-Protestant martyr. The play was originally published anonymously in 1600 (Q1), printed by Valentine Simmes for the bookseller Thomas Pavier. In 1619, a new edition (Q2) carried an attribution to William Shakespeare. The Diary of Philip Henslowe records that the play was written by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye and Robert Wilson. (An entry in Henslowe's Diary records a later payment to Drayton for a second part to the play, which has not survived; because of this fact, the extant play has sometimes been called Sir John Oldcastle, Part I or 1 Sir John Oldcastle.) In 1664, the play was one of the seven dramas added to the second impression of the Shakespeare Third Folio by publisher Philip Chetwinde. The genesis of Sir John Oldcastle is crucially linked to the fact that when Shakespeare's Henry IV plays premiered on stage in 1597-98, the character Sir John Falstaff was called Sir John Oldcastle. This is indicated by abundant external and internal evidence. The change of names, from "Oldcastle" to "Falstaff," is mentioned in seventeenth-century works by Richard James (Epistle to Sir Harry Bourchier, c. 1625) and Thomas Fuller (Worthies of England, 1662). It is also indicated in details in the early texts of Shakespeare's plays. In the quarto text of Henry IV, Part 2 (1600), one of Falstaff's speech prefixes in Act I, Scene ii is mistakenly left uncorrected, "Old." instead of "Falst." In III, ii,25-6 of the same play, Falstaff is said to have been a "page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk" - which was true of the historical Oldcastle. In Henry IV, Part 1, I, ii,42, Prince Hal calls Falstaff "my old lad of the castle." Iambic pentameter verse lines in both parts are irregular when using the name "Falstaff," but correct with "Oldcastle." Finally, there is the blatant disclaimer at the close of Henry IV, Part 2 that disassociates the two figures: "for Oldcastle died [a] martyr, and this is not the man" (Epilogue, 29-32). There is even a hint that Falstaff was originally Oldcastle in The Merry Wives of Windsor too. When the First Folio and quarto texts of that play are compared, it appears that the joke in V, v,85-90 is that Oldcastle/Falstaff incriminates himself by calling out the first letter of his name, "O, O, O!," when his fingertips are singed with candles - which of course works for "Oldcastle" but not "Falstaff." There is also the "castle" reference in IV, v,6 of the same play. The name Falstaff was derived from Sir John Fastolf, who was also a historical person-allegedly a greedy and grasping individual, who had a (probably undeserved) reputation for cowardice at the Battle of Patay. Fastolf, however, died without descendants, making him safe for a playwright's use. He had already appeared as a cowardly knight in Henry VI, part 1.