Alexander Cooke
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Alexander Cooke (died February 1614) was a boy player and actor in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men.
Edmond Malone introduced the hypothesis, still current though far from certain, that Cooke originated all of Shakespeare's principal female roles. That he played female roles is widely accepted, though specifics are scarce. He appears in the cast lists for Ben Jonson's Sejanus (1603), in which he may have played Agrippina, and Volpone (1605), in which he may have been Lady Would-be. He is also named in the cast-lists for Jonson's The Alchemist (1610) and Catiline (1611) and for Beaumont and Fletcher's The Captain (c. 1612).
Cooke appears to have been apprenticed to John Heminges, a King's Man who was also a member of the Grocers' Company, but he does not seem to have claimed freedom of this company; Heminges, along with Henry Condell, was named in Cooke's will as trustee of his children — his sons Francis (born in 1605) and Alexander (1614), and daughters Rebecca (1607) and Alice (1611). He resided in Hill's Rents, in the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark.
Cooke became a shareholder in the King's Men in 1604, when the number of shareholders was expanded to twelve. He apparently ceased acting around 1612, and died in 1614. Alexander Cooke had a brother John; John Payne Collier speculated that this John Cooke was the author of Greene's Tu Quoque.
In The Shakespeare Stealer, Cooke is portrayed as the hero's best friend, Sander.
[edit] References
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
