– January 1632) was an actor with the King's Men, the leading theatre troupe of its time and the company of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage.
The first edition of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, printed in 1623, contains the earliest cast list in English Renaissance drama.
Some commentators blanche at the idea of a 12-year-old boy playing such a prominent woman's role; and some have assigned the part in the first production to the more experienced Richard Robinson,[2] or to Alexander Cooke, the veteran who is thought by some to have originated many Shakespearean heroines.
the cast lists added to the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 credit Sharpe with parts in the King's Men's premiere productions of: — in the 1616–24 era.
Sharpe played Parthenius in the company's production of Philip Massinger's The Roman Actor (1626), Ferdinand the general in the same author's The Picture (1629), Lysander in Lodowick Carlell's The Deserving Favourite (also 1629), Wittworth in John Clavell's The Soddered Citizen (1630), and the King of the Lombards in Arthur Wilson's The Swisser (1631).