George Frederick Cooke (1756-1812)

George Frederick Cooke grew up in Berwick upon Tweed where he enjoyed the performances of travelling players and abandoned his apprenticeship to a printer to join a theatre company. Cooke performed with the Newcastle-based Austin and Heatton company for many years earning the nickname “The Manchester Roscius”.

After performing in the North for decades, Cooke became the major rival to the nation’s greatest star, John Philip Kemble, when he finally appeared on the boards of a London Theatre Royal in 1800 at the age of forty-four. According to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography he was “arguably the first true British romantic actor and the first major foreign star on the American stage” where his appearance “marked the inception of the star system in the United States.” He died in New York in 1812.

Cooke was a friend of the actor James Field Stanfield with whom he first performed at Tate Wilkinson‘s York theatre in February 1786.