rashness, that he performed 'all the principal female characters' in Shakespeare's plays.[1] It must be doubtful whether he was on the stage as early as 1592. He is traceable as a member of the King's men in the casts of Sejanus (1603), Volpone (1605), Alchemist (1610), Catiline (1611), and The Captain (1612-13). The fact that in the first two of these his name occurs at the end of the lists has been somewhat hazardously accepted as an indication that he played women's parts. He is also in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare's plays. Augustine Phillips left him a legacy as his 'fellow' in 1605.
'Mr. Cooke and his wife' commend themselves to Alleyn in his wife's letter of 21 October 1603.[2] The token-books of St. Saviour's, Southwark, show an Alexander Cooke in Hill's Rents during 1604, 1607, 1609, and 1610; and the parish register, recording the baptism of Francis Cooke, son of Alexander, 'a player', on 27 October 1605, makes an identification possible. There were three more children, Rebecca (bapt. 11 October 1607), Alice (bapt. 3 November 1611), Alexander (bapt. 20 March 1614). This last was posthumous; the register records Alexander Cooke's burial on 25 February 1614.[3] His will, dated 3 January 1614, leaves £50 each to Francis, Rebecca, and the unborn child, and the residue to his wife.[4] He owned £50 'which is in the hand of my fellowes, as my share of the stock'. He appoints 'my master Hemings', to whom he had presumably been apprenticed, and Condell trustees for his children, and mentions brothers Ellis and John, of whom the latter is conjectured by Collier to be the author of Greene's Tu Quoque.
COOKE, EDWARD. Chapel, 1509.
COOKE, LIONEL. Queen's, 1583, 1588.
COOKE, THOMAS. Worcester's, 1583.
COOKE, WILLIAM. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.
CORNISH, JOHN. Gentleman of Chapel, and pageant-master at wedding of Arthur in 1501.
CORNISH, KIT. A 'ghost-name' in Chapel records.
CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Song School, Westminster, 1479-80.
CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1509-23. Conceivably identical with the last, and in any case probably of the same family.
COWLEY, RICHARD, was of Strange's men in 1593. He had played minor parts with that company or the Admiral's in The Seven Deadly Sins of 1590-1, and is mentioned in Alleyn's correspondence as travelling with the company. He joined the Chamberlain's men, probably on their formation in 1594, and was payee for the company in 1601. The stage-directions to the Quarto (1600) and Folio texts of Much Ado about Nothing, IV. ii, show that he played Verges. He is in the 1603 and 1604 lists of the King's men, and received a legacy from Augustine Phillips as his 'fellow' in 1605, but does not appear to have been a sharer in the houses of the Globe or Blackfriars. He is in the Folio list of performers in Shakespeare's plays. He dwelt in
