Sir John Oldcastle of Martyrs". Oldcastle was also a minor character in the early Elizabethan history play the "Famous Victories of Henry V" (c. 1586?), which is generally thought to have been one of Shakespeare's sources for his plays on Henry IV and Henry V. 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
Early texts of Shakespeare's works the First Folio and much of the same additional material, with the addition of an unsigned poem by John Milton. The Third Folio was issued in 1663, published by Philip Chetwinde; Chetwinde had married Robert Allot's widow and so obtained the rights to the book. To the second impression of the Third Folio (1664) he added seven plays, namely "Pericles, Prince of Tyre;" "Locrine;" "The London Prodigal;" "The Puritan;" "Sir John Oldcastle;" "Thomas Lord Cromwell;" and "A Yorkshire Tragedy." (See: Shakespeare Apocrypha.) All seven of these additional plays had been published as quartos while Shakespeare was alive, but only "Pericles"