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 and the Interregnum, when theatres were officially closed and standard plays were not allowed.
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, by William Shakespeare (Bottom the Weaver was one droll), Ben Jonson, 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.
If so, he was not entirely successful in his corruption: Puritan authorities raided the Red Bull in June 1653 looking for unauthorized drama, and found Cox, playing Swabber.
[5] A selection of Cox's drolls, including Simpleton, Oenone, and Acteon and Diana, was published by the bookseller Edward Archer in 1656.