Robert Cox (died December 1655) was a seventeenth-century English actor, best known for creating and performing the " drolls" that were a permitted form of dramatic entertainment during the

English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...

and the

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, when theatres were officially closed and standard plays were not allowed. Gerard Langbaine called Cox an "excellent comedian." His origins and early history are obscure; he was with Beeston's Boys in 1639, but nothing else is known about his early life. "Cox probably was a strolling or country player..." through much of his career. Cox had one known connection with one of the theatre companies of the era: he was one of ten men who tried to re-organize the King's Men in December 1648, an attempt that, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not succeed. Cox won his personal fame in writing and performing drolls – interludes or farces that usually consisted of comic scenes extracted and adapted from old dramas of

English Renaissance theatre The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642. Its most prominent playwrights were William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Background The term ''English Renaissance theatr ...

, by

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

(''Bottom the Weaver'' was one droll),

Ben Jonson Benjamin Jonson ( 11 June 1572 – ) was an English playwright, poet and actor. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satire, satirical ...

, John Fletcher, and many others. Cox created at least eleven drolls, with titles like ''Simpleton the Smith'', ''Bumpkin'', ''Hobbinat'', ''Simpkin'', and ''John Swabber the Seaman''. As a performer, Cox was said to have been "irresistible" in his role of Young Simpleton. Cox performed most often at the

Red Bull Theatre The Red Bull Theatre was an inn-yard conversion erected in Clerkenwell, London, operating in the 17th century. For more than forty years, it entertained audiences drawn primarily from the City and its suburbs, developing a reputation over the y ...

, long a center of popular entertainment. By some reports he bribed local officials into looking the other way when his drolls grew too much like plays. If so, he was not entirely successful in his corruption:

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should b ...

authorities raided the Red Bull in June 1653 looking for unauthorized drama, and found Cox, playing ''Swabber''. The gentry among the audience were required to pay five-shilling fines to exit.Randall, p. 151. A selection of Cox's drolls, including ''Simpleton'', ''Oenone'', and ''Acteon and Diana'', was published by the bookseller Edward Archer in 1656.

Francis Kirkman Francis Kirkman (1632 – c. 1680) appears in many roles in the English literary world of the second half of the seventeenth century, as a publisher, bookseller, librarian, author and bibliographer. In each he is an enthusiast for popular liter ...

printed some of Cox's drolls in his famous collections ''The Wits, or Sport upon Sport'' (1662, 1672).

References

17th-century English male actors 1655 deaths Year of birth unknown {{England-actor-stub