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The character here alluded to, which the author was apprehenſive the audience might confound with his virtuous peer appears to have been one that had been exhibited in the old play of King Henry V. ([1] prior to Shakſpeare’s) under the name of Sir John Oldcaſtle[2]. This exhibition was the forg’d invention that had defaced former time. In this old play are found the outlines of ſome of the characters which Shakſpeare has introduced in the two parts of King Henry IV. and King Henry V. The Sir John Oldcaſtle of the old play was probably the prototype of Sir John Falſtaff. It is not neceſſary here to enter into the queſtion, whether Fallſtaff was originally called by the name of Oldcaſtle. Whether he was or not, theſe lines could not, I apprehend, have come from the pen of Shakſpeare. If Falſtaff originally went by the name of Oldcaſtle, Shakſpeare was then as guilty as the author of the old Henry V. and he never would have arraigned himſelf for exhibiting the pampered glutton and aged debauchee, under the name of Sir John Oldcaſtle, the good lord Cobham. Though this were not the caſe, and the fat knight bore originally the name of Fallſtaff Shakſpeare would hardly have touched upon this ſtring; for the repreſenting of Sir John Faſtolfe, a celebrated general, and a knight of the garter, under the character of a debauchee and a counſellor to youthful ſin, was no leſs a forgery, and a departure from the truth of hiſtory, than the other.
Our author himſelf too ſeems to ridicule this very prologue, in his epilogue to the Second Part of King Henry IV. “ For Oldcaſtle dyed a martyr, and this is not the man.”—This ſurely ought to decide the queſtion.
This reference induces me to think that Sir John Oldcaſtle was written before the Second Part of King Henry IV.
21. Second Part of K. Henry IV. 1598.
The Second Part of K. Henry IV. was entered on the Sta-
- ↑ The old K. Henry V. muſt have been written before 1590, for Tarleton, who acted two parts in it, (the Clown, and the Judge) died in that year.
- ↑ If the alluſion ſhould be ſuppoſed to have been, not to the Oldcaſtle of the old play, but to our author’s Sir John Falſtaff, as exhibited in The First Part of King Henry IV. ſuch a ſuppoſition will not at all weaken the argument in the text.
Vol. I.
