Facing Puritanism: Falstaff, Martin Marprelate and the Grotesque Puritan

Abstract

The Lollard martyr Sir John Oldcastle is best known to literary scholars as the model for Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. The likeness between the militant religious leader and the irreverent, drunken knight is not, however, obvious. Oldcastle had become a prominent cultural figure in Elizabethan England, his trial and death recounted in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, Stowe’s Annales, Holinshed’s Chronicles and elsewhere.1 For some, Oldcastle was a valiant, victimized martyr; for others, he was a devious, schismatic heretic and traitor, who betrayed his friend and king, Henry V.2 Yet within Shakespeare’s own time, audiences had no difficulty recognizing Falstaff as a caricature of Oldcastle. Falstaff appears to have been called ‘Oldcastle’ in early performances of 1 Henry IV;3 the name was subsequently changed in order to placate the outraged Lords Cobham, or to appease a disgruntled Protestant audience, who hailed Oldcastle as a hero, but even after ‘Oldcastle’ was re-dubbed ‘Falstaff’ extensive historical and literary evidence indicates that the public did not quickly forget the character’s original and ‘true’ identity.4 The name ‘Oldcastle’ was retained for private (including court) performances, and many seventeenth-century authors indicate that ‘Falstaff’ was widely understood as an alias for the Lollard martyr.5 KeywordsSocial BoundaryChurch AuthorityRhetorical StyleHenry VersusCollect EssayThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.