James Cobb, playwright, entered the secretary's office of the East India Company in 1771, eventually rising to the post of secretary in 1814. Interest in any of Cobb's dramatic works generally arose from their association with actors or composers. In The Humourist (Drury Lane, 27 April 1785), which owed its production to the application of Burke to Sheridan, John Bannister made a great hit as Dabble, a dentist. This piece was burned in the fire at Drury Lane in 1809. Genest, not too good-naturedly, says that if the whole of Cobb's pieces—about twenty-four in number—had shared the same fate, 'the loss would not have been very great'. In Strangers at Home, an opera (Drury Lane, 8 December 1785, published in 1786), with music by Linley, Dorothy Jordan is said to have made her first appearance as a singer, and to have played her first original character. Doctor and Apothecary, a two-act musical farce (Drury Lane, 25 October 1788), introduced to the London stage Stephen Storace, from whose 'Singspiel'—Der Doctor und der Apotheker—performed at Vienna on 11 July 1786, music and plot were taken. The Haunted Tower (Drury Lane, 24 November 1789), also with music by Storace, served for the début in English opera of his sister, Anna Selina Storace. It was very successful, and frequently revived.

Cobb married Mary Starfell on 28 December 1799. He died in 1818.