John Hall (physician)
John Hall (1575 – 25 November 1635) was a physician and son-in-law of William Shakespeare.
Life
He was born at Carlton, Bedfordshire and studied at Queens' College, Cambridge from 1589, receiving a B.A. in 1593 and an M.A. in 1597.[1] He became a physician, although he did not hold an English medical degree; it has been speculated that he studied medicine in France.
He established a practice in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was the only doctor in the town. He married Shakespeare's daughter Susanna on 5 June 1607. They had one daughter, Elizabeth. Their home in Stratford, Hall's Croft, is now open to the public. After Shakespeare's death, they moved into his former house at New Place.
Hall appears to have had a close relationship with his father-in-law, as they are recorded being in agreement over a local issue regarding enclosure in 1613. They are also known to have travelled together to London on business in 1614.
Defamation case
Hall was a leading local
Writings
Hall prepared two notebooks of his
- Wells, Greg; Edmondson, Paul (Eds.): John Hall, Master of Physicke - a casebook from Shakespeare's Stratford, Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-5261-3453-0
Portrayals
The slander case has been used as the subject of a play, The Herbal Bed, by Peter Whelan. In the original production Hall was played by Liam Cunningham.
He was portrayed by Tom Hiddleston in A Waste of Shame: The Mystery of Shakespeare and His Sonnets, a TV film first broadcast on BBC Four on 22 November 2005 as part of a supporting programme for the BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told season.
References
- ^ "Hall, John (HL589J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life, Oxford UP: Oxford, 1998, pp. 384–85.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11968. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)