Page "Falstaff" Paragraph 23

The Cobhams appear to have intervened while Shakespeare was in the process of writing either The Merry Wives of Windsor or the second part of Henry IV.

The first part of Henry IV was probably written and performed in 1596, and the name Oldcastle had almost certainly been allowed by Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney.

William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham may have become aware of the offensive representation after a public performance ; he may also have learned of it while it was being prepared for a court performance ( Cobham was at that time Lord Chamberlain ).

As father-in-law to the newly-widowed Robert Cecil, Cobham certainly possessed the influence at court to get his complaint heard quickly.

Shakespeare may have included a sly retaliation against the complaint in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor ( published after the Henry IV series ).

In the play, the paranoid, jealous Master Ford uses the alias " Brook " to fool Falstaff, perhaps in reference to William Brooke.

At any rate, The name is Falstaff in the Henry IV, part 1 quarto, of 1598, and the epilogue to the second part, published in 1600, contains this clarification: