John Hall
Coat of arms of John Hall {left}impaled with thecoat of arms of Shakespeare {right}
Born	1575 Carlton, Bedfordshire, England
Died	25 November 1635(1635-11-25) (aged 59–60)
Spouse	Susanna Hall ​ (m. 1607)​

John Hall (1575 – 25 November 1635) was an English physician and son-in-law ofWilliam Shakespeare as the husband ofSusanna Hall.

He was born atCarlton, Bedfordshire and studied atQueens' College, Cambridge from 1589, receiving a B.A. in 1593 and an M.A. in 1597.^[1] He became aphysician, although he did not hold an English medical degree; it has been speculated that he studied medicine in France.

He established a practice inStratford-upon-Avon, where he was the only doctor in the town. He married Shakespeare's daughterSusanna 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 atNew Place.

Hall appears to have had a close relationship with his father-in-law, as they are recorded as 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.

Hall was a leading localPuritan. He had supported the Puritan vicar, Thomas Wilson, against whom there was much local opposition. In 1613, a member of the anti-Wilson faction, John Lane, defamed Susanna, claiming she had committed adultery with one Ralph Smith, a 35-year-old haberdasher, and had caught a venereal disease from Smith. On 15 July the Halls brought suit for slander against Lane in theConsistory Court at Worcester. Robert Whatcott, who three years later witnessed Shakespeare's will, testified for the Halls, but Lane failed to appear. Lane was found guilty and excommunicated. He was later involved in a riot to protest against Wilson.^[2]

Hall prepared two notebooks of hiscase notes with the intention that they be published. They were purchased and translated fromLatin by James Cooke (1614–1688), a surgeon.^[3] He published them in 1657, 22 years after Hall's death, asSelect observations on English bodies, or Cures both empericall and historicall performed upon very eminent persons in desperate diseases. The earliest case, in Stratford, dates from 1611, making it almost certain that Hall lived and worked in Stratford from at least the time of his marriage. The first notebook still survives, but the original manuscript of the second notebook has been lost.

• 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

The slander case has been used as the subject of a play,The Herbal Bed, byPeter Whelan. In the original production Hall was played byLiam Cunningham.

He was portrayed byTom Hiddleston inA Waste of Shame: The Mystery of Shakespeare and His Sonnets, a TV film first broadcast onBBC Four on 22 November 2005 as part of a supporting programme for the BBC'sShakespeaRe-Told season.

Hadley Fraser portrayed him in the 2018 movieAll Is True, directed byKenneth Branagh.

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• 1636 deaths
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