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
John Shakespeare John Shakespeare John Shakespeare (c. 1531 – 7 September 1601) was the father of William Shakespeare. He was the son of Richard Shakespeare of the Warwickshire village of Snitterfield, a farmer . He moved to Stratford-upon-Avon and married Mary Arden, with whom he had eight children, five of whom survived into adulthood. A well-to-do glover and whittawer (leather worker) by trade, Shakespeare was a dealer in hides and wool, and was elected to several municipal offices, serving as an alderman and culminating in a term as bailiff, the chief magistrate of the town council, and Mayor of Stratford in 1568,