Bardolph (Shakespeare character) I", the 1598 quarto, he is called "Rossill" (an archaic spelling of the name Russell) and is at one point specified as "sir Iohn Russel". This is generally taken to mean that he originally had that name in the first performances of the play, just as Falstaff too had originally been given another name: Sir John Oldcastle. Shakespeare may have changed the name when he was forced to change Oldcastle to Falstaff after complaints from the Oldcastle family. It is possible he decided to remove any suggestion that he was ridiculing the Russell family (which included William Russell, 1st Baron
Bardolph (Shakespeare character) the film "Cold Mountain" are named Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol. Bardolph comments on various events, factions, and characters in Jason Sholtis's Dungeons & Dragons adventure Operation Unfathomable. On screen Bardolph has been portrayed twice by Gordon Gostelow, an actor who was described as "born" to play the part. He depicted him in the 1960 BBC production "An Age of Kings" and in the 1979 BBC Television Shakespeare films of the Henriad plays. In the "Age of Kings" version of "Henry V", after Bardolph dies Gostelow is 'reborn' to become Sir Thomas Erpingham, mutating from the king's disreputable companion in criminality