ENGLISH actor George Frederick Cooke was born in London, and made his first appearance on the stage in Brentford at the age of twenty as Dumont in Jane Shore. His first London appearance was at the Haymarket in 1778, but it was not until 1794 in Dublin, as Othello, that he attained high rank in his profession. In 1801 he appeared in London as Richard III, Iago, Shylock and Sir Giles Overreach, and became the rival of Kemble, with whom, however, and with Mrs. Siddons, he acted from 1803. His intemperate habits unfortunately grew more and more notorious, and on at least one occasion the curtain had to be rung down owing to the audience hissing his drunken condition. He visited the United States in 1810, and died in New York on the 26th of September 1811. A monument to his memory was erected in St. Paul's churchyard by Edmund Kean.

This article was originally published in Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition. F.T.M. Cambridge: University Press, 1911.

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