Sir John Oldcastle

"Sir John Oldcastle" by William Shakespeare is an Elizabethan play published in 1600. The work dramatizes the story of John Oldcastle, a 14th-/15th-century rebel and religious dissenter viewed by some as a proto-Protestant martyr. The play emerged from controversy surrounding Shakespeare's character Falstaff, originally named Oldcastle in "Henry IV," which offended the powerful Cobham family—descendants of the historical figure. Written actually by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye, and Robert Wilson, this drama sought to rehabilitate Oldcastle's reputation as a valiant captain and godly martyr. (This is an automatically generated summary.)