In effect, though, both The Mirror of Martyrs and Sir John Old-Castle were critiquing Shakespeare's historiography not his characterisation, and these concerns were fuelled by the enormous and ongoing popularity of Henry IV, Part One. 6-9)Ī similar corrective is presented in John Weever's poem The Mirror of Martyrs (1601) in which the ghost of Sir John Oldcastle narrates the story of his valorous life.ģShakespeare's gluttonous and less-than-valiant knight clearly did not please all of his contemporaries and the character has generated polarised critical responses ever since. The prologue to Sir John Old-Castle asserts:īut one whose virtues shone above the rest,Ī valiant martyr and a virtuous peer (Prol. Sir John Falstaff was originally named Sir John Oldcastle, and the name was changed, purportedly because it had offended Oldcastle's descendants and those who thought of Oldcastle as a Protestant martyr (see Performance History). It was written by a group of playwrights for a rival company to Shakespeare's, the Admiral's Men, although, strangely, one of its quarto printings from 1600 states that it was "Written by William Shakespeare." Sir John Old-Castle was designed as a corrective to Shakespeare's portrait of Prince Hal's companion in the Henry IV plays. Of necessity much of the following discussion will refer to Henry IV, Part One alongside these other plays.ĢOne of the first printed critiques of Henry IV, Part One could be said to be another play: The First Part of the True and Honorable Historie, of the life of Sir John Old-Castle, the Good Lord Cobham. To complicate matters, a significant proportion of twentieth-century criticism discusses Part One within the context of Shakespeare's other history plays, particularly those of the second tetralogy: Richard II, Henry IV Parts One and Two,and Henry V or what has been dubbed the "Henriad": Henry IV Parts One and Two,and Henry V. It is, in fact, impossible to describe the critical history of Henry IV, Part One without reference to Part Twoand debate about the relationship between the two plays has occupied many critics (see for example Jenkins 1956, Yachnin 1991, and Pugliatti 1996). Because Falstaff-like most of the play's characters-also appears in Henry IV, Part Two, early criticism usually discusses Henry IV as if the two parts are one play. Henry IV, Part One has always been a controversial play, with much of that controversy focussed on the character that embodies contradictoriness, Sir John Falstaff. 1Falstaff, Henry IV, Part One and early responses
0 kommentar(er)
