Falstaff them: "let us every one go home, and laugh this sport o'er by a country fire; Sir John and all". Shakespeare originally named Falstaff "John Oldcastle". Lord Cobham, a descendant of the historical John Oldcastle, complained, forcing Shakespeare to change the name. Shakespeare's "Henry IV" plays and "Henry V" adapted and developed the material in an earlier play called "The Famous Victories of Henry V", in which Sir John "Jockey" Oldcastle appears as a dissolute companion of the young Henry. In the published version of "Henry IV, Part 1", Falstaff's name is always unmetrical, suggesting a name change after the
A Yorkshire Tragedy A Yorkshire Tragedy A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestic tragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare, though the modern critical consensus rejects this attribution, favouring Thomas Middleton. "A Yorkshire Tragedy" was entered into the Stationers' Register on 2 May 1608; the entry assigns the play to "Wylliam Shakespere." The play was published soon after, in a quarto issued by bookseller Thomas Pavier, who had published "Sir John Oldcastle," another play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, in 1600. The play was reprinted in 1619, as part of William Jaggard's False Folio.