Sir John Oldcastle Part 1, first edition

The first edition of Sir John Oldcastle Part 1 poses many difficulties. Firstly, there exist two different quartos of the play bearing the year 1600, one of which bears Shakespeare’s name as author. Thomas Pavier published both editions; but the one which bears Shakespeare’s name is in fact a falsely dated 1619 edition (for a discussion of which see Sir John Oldcastle Part 1, second edition). The genuine 1600 edition shown here is anonymous. The play’s “first part” indicates the promise or availability of a “Part 2” which is lost, but which was also bought by Philip Henslowe for the Admiral’s Men (Knutson 2010).

The Protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle is the historical original of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. Although Shakespeare is unnamed, the play’s Prologue articulates a relationship to the Henry IV plays in its claim that “It is no pamperd glutton we present, / Nor aged Councellor to youthfull sinne,” (A2r) providing one of the strongest pieces of corroborative evidence that Shakespeare’s Falstaff may have originally been called “Oldcastle,” and that this play purported to tell the “true” story of the maligned martyr.

The play’s attribution to Shakespeare has not endured partly because Henslowe’s diary records payments to Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson and Richard Hathaway for both Parts of the play. Nonetheless, James Marino has made an interesting case that the shared theatrical property of Falstaff/Oldcastle, which is in some respects admitted by this play’s Prologue, may have led to the play being in some sense considered Shakespeare’s (Marino 2001).