John Weever of a religious tone, "The Mirror of Martyrs" and "An Agnus Dei". "The Mirror of Martyrs or The Life and Death of ... Sir John Oldcastle" may have been part of a backlash. In his preface Weever calls it the "first trew Oldcastle", perhaps on account of the fact that Shakespeare's character Falstaff first appeared as "Sir John Oldcastle". Weever's work is influenced by John Bale's 1544 biography of Oldcastle, which presents him as a proto-Protestant martyr. In the fourth stanza of this long poem, in which Sir John is his own panegyrist, occurs a reminiscence of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"
Religious views of William Shakespeare Shakespeare's portrayal; the story of Oldcastle was a popular one and telling the tale from the "Papist" perspective (while acknowledging that perhaps this was a perspective with which Shakespeare already had some affinity) was an effective and familiar way to bring it to his audience. A direct explanation, however, comes from the facts of the story in the contemporary accounts of the period; Prince Henry had left his dear friend Oldcastle to his fate after he had failed to persuade the stubborn old knight to recant when he was imprisoned for lollardry. Archdeacon Richard Davies, a 17th-century Anglican cleric, wrote