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"
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"