Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/315

[ 299 ] The character here alluded to, which the author was apprehenive the audience might confound with his virtuous peer appears to have been one that had been exhibited in the old play of King Henry V. ( prior to Shakpeare’s) under the name of Sir John Oldcatle. This exhibition was the forg’d invention that had defaced former time. In this old play are found the outlines of ome of the characters which Shakpeare has introduced in the two parts of King Henry IV. and King Henry V. The Sir John Oldcatle of the old play was probably the prototype of Sir John Faltaff. It is not neceSS undefinedary here to enter into the quetion, whether Falltaff was originally called by the name of Oldcatle. Whether he was or not, thee lines could not, I apprehend, have come from the pen of Shakpeare. If Faltaff originally went by the name of Oldcatle, Shakpeare was then as guilty as the author of the old Henry V. and he never would have arraigned himelf for exhibiting the pampered glutton and aged debauchee, under the name of Sir John Oldcatle, the good lord Cobham. Though this were not the cae, and the fat knight bore originally the name of Falltaff Shakpeare would hardly have touched upon this tring; for the repreenting of Sir John Fatolfe, a celebrated general, and a knight of the garter, under the character of a debauchee and a counellor to youthful in, was no les a forgery, and a departure from the truth of hitory, than the other.

Our author himelf too eems to ridicule this very prologue, in his epilogue to the Second Part of King Henry IV. “ For Oldcatle dyed a martyr, and this is not the man.”—This urely ought to decide the quetion.

This reference induces me to think that Sir John Oldcatle was written before the Second Part of King Henry IV.

The Second Part of K. Henry IV. was entered on the Sta- Vol. I.