John Heminges and the Droitwich Shakespeare Connection The discovery in St. Omer of the 233rd copy of the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays has prompted some research with surprising results. John Heminges (sometimes spelled Heming, Heminges, Hemminge or Hemings) (bapt. 25 November 1556 - 10 October 1630) was an English Renaissance actor. Most noted as one of the editors of William Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio, Heminges served in his time as an actor and financial manager for the King's Men. Heminges was baptised at Droitwich, Worcestershire, on 25 November 1556. 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 sea-coal-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. Heminges was mentioned in Shakespeare's will, along with Richard Burbage and Henry Condell, each being bequeathed 26 shillings and eightpence to buy mourning rings in his memory. Burbage died before the publication of the First Folio, but Heminges and Condell acted ostensibly as co-editors and mentioned in their epistle to "the great Variety of Readers" the "care, and paine" they took to collect the works, since the author had not "liv'd to have set forth, and overseen his owne writings". Their editorial efforts were vital to preserving a number of Shakespeare's plays, some of which might have been lost otherwise. Due to his intimate involvement in the creation of the First Folio, readers have found it both tempting and easy to idealise Heminges; one early critic, exercising more admiration than objectivity, wrote that "He was a fine actor, a trustworthy man, and had a good head for business. Until his death, he managed the company's financial affairs with extraordinary success." A darker picture of Heminges emerged when American researcher Charles William Wallace discovered the records of the lawsuit Ostler v. Heminges (1615). When King's Man William Ostler died intestate in 1614, his property should have passed to his widow, Thomasine Ostler (formerly Heminges). But the widow's father, John Heminges, seized control of his late son-in- law's shares in the Globe and Blackfriars theatres, and Thomasine sued her father to regain her property. The surviving records do not specify the final outcome of the suit, though it appears that Heminges managed to retain control of the shares. At his death, his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars theatres passed to his son, William Heminges. Heminges died in October 1630 in Southwark, and was buried 12 October 1630 at the parish church of St Mary Aldermanbury. In his will he had asked to be buried as close to his wife as possible.

First published in Droitwich Spa Civic Society Newsletter 152 – Autumn/Winter 2014-15