John Heminges

John Heminges (sometimes spelled Heming or Heminge) (bapt. 25 November 1566 – 10 October 1630) was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. Along with Henry Condell, he was an editor of the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623. He was also the financial manager for the King's Men.

Heminges was baptised at Droitwich, Worcestershire, on 25 November 1566. Sent to London at the age of twelve, he was apprenticed for nine years to the City Grocer John Collins, becoming a freeman of the Grocers' Company on 24 April 1587. On 10 March 1588 he received a licence to marry Rebecca Knell (née Edwards), the widow of William Knell, an actor with the Queen's Men who had been killed at Thame, Oxfordshire, in 1587 by John Towne, a fellow actor. Heminges and his sixteen-year-old wife settled in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury, and had at least thirteen children there between the years 1590 and 1613.

Heminges's association with the theatre had begun by 1593, when he and Augustine Phillips were with Lord Strange's Men. By the next year he and Phillips had joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men. Heminges remained with the Company until his death. Privy Council records from 1630 state that he received £100 to relieve the Company during a period of plague.

Heminges remained active in the Grocers' Company alongside his theatrical activities; indeed, the two sometimes intertwined. On 13 December 1608 he was admitted as one of the ten seacoal-meters for the city of London, citizens appointed to measure the coal imported into the city by sea. Shortly afterwards he took on John Jackson as his deputy. Both Heminges and Jackson later acted as trustees for William Shakespeare when he purchased the Blackfriars Gatehouse in 1613. Between 1595 and 1628 Heminges took on ten apprentices with the Grocers' Company. Of these ten, eight appear to have performed for Heminges's company, in both boys' and adult roles. Alexander Cooke was one of his apprentices. Heminges also built and operated a taphouse at the Globe.

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