Works
Cockayne is the author of A Masque at Bretbie, which was performed on Twelfth Night of the Christmas seaon in 1639, and of Small Poems of Divers Sorts, published in 1658. He also wrote plays: The Obstinate Lady, a comedy (first printed 1657), and Trappolin Suppos'd a Prince, a tragicomedy (printed 1658); and The Tragedy of Ovid (or Ovid's Tragedy) (printed 1662). All three were published in one volume by Francis Kirkman in 1669. His works and his surviving letters constitute still-useful sources of information on the social and cultural affairs of mid-17th-century England.
Cockayne's Small Poems collection of 1658 included verses to Humphrey Moseley, publisher of the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio. In that poem, Cockayne, a friend to both Massinger and Fletcher, noted that Massinger was part-author of many plays in the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio—which eventually inspired a sweeping examination of the authorship problem in the canon of John Fletcher and his various collaborators. He dedicated his tragedy on Ovid, to his cousin Charles Cotton.
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