HAMOND. Worcester’s, 1565.
HARRISON, JOHN. A ‘player’ whose daughter Suzanna by wife Anne was baptized at St. Helen’s on 10 January 1602.
HARRISON, WILLIAM. Worcester’s, 1583.
HARVEY. Chamberlain’s, 1597.
HAWKINS, ALEXANDER. Blackfriars lessee, 1601; Revels patentee, 1604.
HAYNE, WILLIAM. Head Master of Merchant Taylors’, 1599–1625.
HAYSELL, GEORGE. Worcester’s, 1583. For a possible notice of the same man, cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Misogonus.
HEARNE, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1597.
HELLE, JOHN. Admiral’s, 1597.
HEMINGES, JOHN, whose name is variously spelt, appearing, for example, as ‘Heminge’ in his signature to the dedication of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, and as ‘Hemmings’ in the actor-list in the same volume, is known to have had a wife Rebecca, and may fairly be identified with the ‘John Hemminge, gent.’ of St. Mary Cornhill, who was married on 10 March 1588 to Rebecca Knell, widow, relict of William Knell, gent., late of St. Mary Aldermanbury. In the same parish William Knell had married Rebecca Edwards on 30 January 1586, and an older William Knell had been buried on 24 September 1578.[958] One of these was not improbably the early actor celebrated by Heywood. Malone found a family of Heming at Shottery, and conjectured that of this family John was born at some date earlier than the opening of the Stratford-on-Avon register in 1558.[959] But this is rendered improbable by a confirmation of arms in 1629 to ‘John Hemings of London Gent. of long tyme Servant to Queen Elizabeth of happie Memory, also to King James hir Royal Successor and to King Charles his Sonne’, in which he is described as ‘Sonne and Heire of George Hemings of Draytwiche in the Countye of Worcester Gent.’[960] There seems little reason to doubt that this John Hemings is the player. He very probably began his theatrical career with the Queen’s company, to which also Knell had belonged. By May 1593, however, he had joined Strange’s men, from whom he passed to the Chamberlain’s men, probably on the original formation in 1594. Of this company, afterwards the King’s men, he remained a member to the end of his career. He appears in all the official lists of the company up to 1629, and regularly acted as their payee for Court performances, generally with a colleague from 1596 to 1601, and thereafter alone. This and his prominence in the negotiations of the company and the lawsuits arising out of them, suggest that he acted as their business manager. As an actor he appears in all the casts up to Catiline in 1611, but not thereafter; possibly he may have resigned acting, and devoted himself to business. The unreliable John Roberts, Answer to Pope (1729), conjectures that he was a ‘tragedian’. Malone had seen a statement in some tract of which he had forgotten the title, that he was the original performer of Falstaff.[961] The lines on the burning of the Globe in 1613 thus describe him: