The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 2

by E. K. Chambers

COBORNE, EDWARD. A ‘player’ whose son John was baptized at St. Giles’s on 23 Nov. 1616. Of other family entries, 1613–25, some are for Edward Coborne ‘gentleman’ (Bodl.). He may be identical with Colbrand.

COKE, RICHARD. Interluders, 1547–56.

COLBRAND, EDWARD. Palsgrave’s, 1610–13.

COLE. Paul’s, 1599.

COLMAN, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509.

CONDELL, HENRY, has been conjectured to be the ‘Harry’ cast for Ferrex and a Lord in the ‘plot’ of The Seven Deadly Sins, as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1. The first definite notice of him is in the cast of Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, as played by the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. Thereafter he appears in all formal lists of the Chamberlain’s and King’s men, up to the Caroline patent of 1625, including the list in the First Folio of 1623, of which, with Heminges, he acted as editor. He is also in all the casts up to The Humourous Lieutenant (c. 1619). About this date he presumably ceased to play; his part of the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi had passed to Richard Robinson by 1623. The fact that he took this part somewhat discredits the conjecture of John Roberts (Answer to Pope, 1729) that he was a comedian; nor can the statement of the same writer that he was a printer be verified. He is staged with other members of the company in Marston’s Malcontent (1604), and appears as ‘Henry Condye’ in the verses on the burning of the Globe in 1613. He is assigned 26s. 8d. to buy a ring as Shakespeare’s ‘fellowe’ in his will of 1616, and appears also as a legatee in the will of Augustine Phillips in 1605, as trustee in that of Alexander Cooke in 1614, as executor and joint residuary legatee in that of Nicholas Tooley in 1623, under which also his wife and his daughter Elizabeth receive legacies, and as executor in that of John Underwood in 1625. By 1599 he was married and apparently settled in St. Mary Aldermanbury, where he held various parochial offices during 1606–21, and the register records his children: Elizabeth (bapt. 27 February 1599, bur. 11 April 1599), Anne (bapt. 4 April 1601, bur. 16 July 1610), Richard (bapt. 18 April 1602), Elizabeth (bapt. 14 April 1603, bur. 22 April 1603), Elizabeth (bapt. 26 October 1606), Mary (bapt. 30 January 1608, bur. from Hoxton at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 24 March 1608), Henry (bapt. 6 May 1610, bur. 4 March 1630), William (bapt. 26 May 1611), Edward (bapt. 22 August 1614, bur. 23 August 1614).[942] Subsequently he had a ‘country house’ at Fulham, at which on 10 September 1625 a pamphlet written by certain players on their travels during the plague, as a reply to Dekker’s A Rod for Run-awayes, under the title of The Run-awayes Answer, was addressed to him, with an expression of gratitude for a ‘free and noble farewell’ which he had given the writers. At Fulham, too, on 13 December 1627, he made his will, leaving to his widow Elizabeth, his sons Henry and William, and his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Herbert Finch, much household property at Aldermanbury and elsewhere in London, including ‘rents and profits’ by ‘leases and terms of years’ of ‘messuages houses and places’ in Blackfriars and on the Bankside, which were to pass for a time to William and ultimately to the widow.[943] Condell had not been an original sharer in the house of the Globe, but by 1612 had acquired an interest jointly with Heminges; of the Blackfriars house he was an original sharer in 1608. The Sharers Papers of 1635 indicate that Mrs. Condell had held four-sixteenths of the Globe and one-eighth of the Blackfriars, but had transferred two-sixteenths of the Globe when Taylor and Lowin were admitted as sharers. A minor legacy in Condell’s will is to his old servant, Elizabeth Wheaton, of her ‘place or priviledge’ in the Globe and Blackfriars. Heminges and Cuthbert Burbadge are named as overseers. Condell was buried on 29 December 1627, and his widow on 3 October 1635, both at St. Mary Aldermanbury.[944]

COOKE, ALEXANDER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Sander’ who is cast in the ‘plot’ of The Seven Deadly Sins as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, for the parts of Videna in Envy and Progne in Lechery. But, as far as this goes, he might just as well be the ‘San.’ who took the part of a player in Taming of a Shrew (1594), ind. 1, which was a Pembroke’s play. Malone ‘presumes’, with some rashness, that he performed ‘all the principal female characters’ in Shakespeare’s plays.[945] 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.[946] 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.[947] His will, dated 3 January 1614, leaves £50 each to Francis, Rebecca, and the unborn child, and the residue to his wife.[948] 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.