I Was Cleopatra

by Dennis Abrams

  I Was Cleopatra

  Dennis Abrams

  Groundwood Books

  House of Anansi Press

  Toronto Berkeley

  Copyright © 2018 by Dennis Abrams

  The author would like to thank historian Garry Wills, whose references to John Rice in his books Verdi’s Shakespeare: Men of the Theater, Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Making Make-Believe Real: Politics as Theater in Shakespeare’s Time inspired this work.

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2018 by Groundwood Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  We acknowledge the Government of Canada for its financial support of our publishing program.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Abrams, Dennis, author

  I was Cleopatra / Dennis Abrams.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77306-022-4 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-1-77306-023-1 (EPUB).—

  ISBN 978-1-77306-024-8 (Kindle)

  I. Title.

  pz7.1.a27ia 2018 j813’.6 c2017-905299-3

  c2017-905300-0

  Jacket art by Pablo Auladell

  Jacket design by Michael Solomon

  To Garry Wills.

  And to Sheila Barry,

  who believed in me, in John

  and in this book.

  An Introduction

  In which the author lays out

  the groundwork for the story

  that is to come

  I was Cleopatra.

  I was Lady Macbeth.

  I was Cordelia in Master Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Lear. And I was the Fool in the same play.

  I was Imogen in Cymbeline. I was Marina in Pericles. I was Paulina in The Winter’s Tale.

  I was Desdemona when England’s most renowned troupe of actors, the King’s Men, performed in Oxford in 1610.

  I was Lucrezia Borgia in Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter.

  I was summoned to perform on numerous occasions before King James I, his family and his court.

  I was featured in plays written by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster and other leading playwrights of my time. I knew them, worked with them, learned from them and became, I like to think, their friends.

  I was, for a time, an actor at the Globe Theatre in London, where before I entered my full adulthood and because of what some called my beauty — my physical qualities and appearance and demeanor — I was featured and praised for my performances in leading women’s roles, to both my shame and, I must confess, my pride.

  I was loved by boys and girls and by men and women. And I loved them in return.

  My name is John Rice.

  I am now thirty-five years old, childless, my dear beloved wife gone for nearly ten years. She died shortly after giving birth to our son, who followed her just three days later.

  The theaters are closed because the plague is once again ravaging London. The time has now come to say goodbye to all of that. The time has come for me to turn my back on that world of fakery and artifice and make-believe, and return to the real world. The time has come for me to say goodbye to the theater and, if God wills it, to find a new life and salvation in the church.

  This then is a farewell to my past life.

  Chapter One

  In which I tell the history of

  my childhood, my parents, my

  brothers and sisters, and my

  education

  Since my life in London has been a very different one from that of my childhood in Reading, Berkshire, and since the life I lived in Reading is one largely unknown to the friends and associates of my adulthood, I think it of the essence, in order to help understand who I am, to relate in detail various aspects of that period before I came to the city.

  My father, Thomas Rice, was a glover by trade, self-made, who earned a fair living manufacturing and selling gloves and other leather goods to the town’s gentry as well as to those of our own mercantile class.

  My mother, Jane, was of a good and godly family from the nearby countryside, and gave to my father seven children. The first of them was my elder brother, Thomas, my hero and also rival for our father’s affection, born in 1588. Following were myself, born in 1590; my brother William, born a year later but taken by the plague at the age of two; my beloved sister Elizabeth, born in 1593, who despite being three years my younger seemed to understand me the best; my brother Edward, born one year later, taken by smallpox at the age of six; my sister Agnes, born in 1596 but taken by measles before she was a year old; and my youngest brother, Henry, born in 1597, at the same moment my mother died giving him birth.

  Because of our father’s success as a glove maker and merchant, and due to the everlasting grace of God, our lives were comfortable, at least compared to others I saw in town, and, in particular, compared to those unfortunate poor I would see every day of my time in London.

  Our house was built in the old style that can still be found in the further reaches of the country. There were two stories, with a hall and parlor on the ground floor, both with hearths that provided warmth for the rest of the house. The upstairs was one large room where all slept — Father and Mother in the best bed, my brothers and I in one of lesser quality but still elevated off the ground in a wooden frame and stuffed with the sweetest-smelling barley straw available. My sister slept in a similar bed, and our servant slept in the corner of the room in a coarsely stuffed straw bed set directly on the ground.

  The kitchen was in the back, in a small building separate from the main house. Alongside it were the brew house, where my mother made our daily beer and ale, a small apiary that provided enough honey for the family as well as some additional for my mother to sell at the market held each Wednesday, and a small vegetable and herb garden.

  Father’s workshop was in a room added on to the house, across from the main hall. There, with the gloves, belts, purses and aprons that he crafted with the aid of his assistants, were kept the animal skins used in their making. The house was filled with the pungent aroma of the family’s urine, collected every morning from the chamber pots kept under our beds and used to soften the skins. Less pungent but equally memorable were the yeasty aromas of brewing beer and our daily bread baking that wafted in from the outside.

  My childhood was a childhood like any other with one exception perhaps worthy of mention. My brother Thomas was strong and healthy and adept at what boys were expected to be good at, and so was, quite naturally, the favorite of my father’s eye. I was not so strong and healthy. I was small and thin, not at all good at archery and other physical activities that I was expected to be good at. Added to that, and perhaps increasing the shame I felt my father had at having a son such as myself, I was, in the words of our servant Mary, “pretty enough in himself to be a girl.” To this sentiment my mother nodded her quiet assent, and perhaps out of sympathy, she allowed me extra attention and encouragement.

  Although she never learned to write anything beyond her own name, Mother did know how to read. So it was
she who patiently taught me and my brothers and sisters the letters of the alphabet, the rudiments of reading and, of course, our morning and evening prayers, which she, in particular, loved to hear me sing. She would often tell me her wish for me was that I would, when the time came, enter the church and live a life of quiet devotion to our Lord and Savior.

  Thanks to Mother’s encouragement, I took to my lessons well, which is why, in part, her death was such a great loss for me. After she passed (and I can still hear her screams of pain before the sudden silence of her death was quickly filled in with the cries of newly born Henry), I felt very much alone.

  And so two years later, while Thomas remained at home to learn the glovers’ trade, which I was quite obviously not meant for (since lifting the heavy hides, treating them, cutting them — all the physical effort needed was beyond my abilities), at the age of nine, I was taken out of my childhood gown, put into my first adult pants and linen shirt, and sent off to the local primary school. There I continued my education, in the hope that it would help me to eventually find a trade.

  The primary school my father sent me to, named after King Edward VI, was much the same as any other in the region. There were fifteen boys in attendance, with a screen dividing the room between the younger boys and those who were older and more advanced.

  My day started early. I rose at five, said my prayers, cleansed my face and then, tucking the tail of my shirt between my legs as was the custom, put on my pants, had a small breakfast of bread and fruit and ale, and went off to school.

  Class began at six during the summer, but during the winter months, when early light was scarce, it began as late as seven. For the next four years I attended school. During my first two years, mornings were spent studying Latin grammar, and then once grammar was mastered, in studying and memorizing the classic Latin texts. I was allowed to go home for thirty minutes at midday for my dinner, then returned to school for afternoon classes until just before dark, with more Latin to be memorized, additional Latin to be recited, and Latin to be discussed and argued over.

  Our first textbook, Lily’s A Short Introduction to Grammar, which, truth be told, was not in its essence short in the least, was used to lay the groundwork for all the lessons that were to come. The next step in our education was practicing conversation and then letter writing — learning how to say “thank you for your letter” in one hundred and fifty different ways, or perhaps pretending that I was Julius Caesar writing a letter to the Roman Senate requesting that they grant him power and responsibilities beyond those he already had.

  In order to instruct us thoroughly, the master would read us a text in Latin, declare its argument by suggesting a motto or some other way to summarize it and thus fit it into our memories, then translate it into English, carefully explaining and analyzing the grammar, both in Latin and in English, as he went along. Tests of our ability to translate and to memorize the texts were given each day, and any errors or mistakes or hesitations when being questioned were dealt with sternly.

  But after those skills were mastered, we were, to my delight if not always that of my schoolmates, introduced to classical literature: Ovid and his tales of magic and metamorphoses, Aesop and his fables, Virgil, Cicero and so many others. The many hours spent learning these stories and memorizing long passages of poetry and prose to the satisfaction of my teacher proved to be invaluable to me in my future life on the stage.

  I was most fortunate in that my schoolteacher, Master Harding, was sympathetic to his young charges and didn’t berate or beat us more than was necessary and deserved. Latin seemed to come easily to me, and while my schoolmates often teased and mocked me for what they termed my “girlish” ways and lack of interest in their rough-and-tumble manner of play, they were, most thankfully, largely silent when it came to my school work.

  And while I hesitate to appear or to sound boastful or prideful, I excelled when we were called upon to read and perform plays written by the ancient masters, in particular the comedies of Terence and Plautus. I was, again, because of my small stature and more feminine way of being (at least when compared to some of the other boys), called upon to play the female leads in those plays.

  And here, I must confess, I felt a singular kind of liberation. In performing the role of a young girl, I was, although in part embarrassed, also oddly comfortable, embracing qualities in myself that in everyday life were to be mocked and scorned, but in the schoolroom setting generated praise from Master Harding that brought me deep satisfaction.

  So it was in this way that my life as a young boy proceeded along its prescribed path of school, family, births, deaths and the passage of the seasons, until the year 1603, when at the age of thirteen I found myself on an entirely new road.

  Chapter Two

  In which I describe the means

  by which I became an actor

  The time had come for my father to decide in what manner I would earn my living and how to arrange for my training, since, as was apparent to all including myself, I was not made in such a way as to allow me to work as a glover alongside him and my brother.

  In 1603 the plague once again struck London with a terrible ferocity, bringing about the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children. To help stop the spread of the dreaded disease, which at its height was laying more than thirteen hundred innocents dead from one Sabbath to the next, it was ordered that theaters in London be closed. It was the combination of those two events, fortunate and unfortunate, that led to my life on the stage.

  Being unable to perform and earn a living in London, the King’s Men, the city’s most praised and renowned group of actors, escaped the pestilence by touring the provinces and performing some of their most popular productions in front of audiences who would not have had the chance to see them otherwise. And so, by the grace of God, they came to Reading.

  Encouraged to do so by Master Harding, my father obtained tickets for us to attend a performance of Master Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It. Reading, with the exception of a few Puritans who rejected the notion of staged theatrics on religious grounds, was in a state of excitement unmatched by even the yearly fair.

  The weather was fine on the warm late fall afternoon that the King’s Men performed, and as my father and I stood below the level of the stage (erected especially on the occasion of the players’ visit), I found myself enthralled by what I was seeing and hearing, as well as overcome with emotions that were altogether unfamiliar to me.

  Alexander Cook, then eighteen years old and nearing the end of his successful career acting in women’s roles, played the delightful heroine Rosalind. I stood gape-jawed in amazement and wonder as Alexander, who would later prove to be a good friend and more, transformed himself into Rosalind, and then when Rosalind slipped into her disguise as the young man Ganymede, magically became a man playing a woman playing a man. I was in raptures, not only from the play itself and the spell cast by Alexander, but also from the reaction of the crowd, willing itself to believe that Alexander was actually a young woman pretending to be a man and not the young man he really was, with the first faint wisps of a beard to prove it.

  As magical as it all was, the moment that I shall never forget — the moment that seemed to change something within me — came at the end of the production, with the play’s epilogue. Alexander, still in costume as Rosalind, came onstage one last time to address the audience. I can still remember his final words:

  If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I defied not. And I am sure as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths will for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

  I confess that I knew not what to think. There he was, a young man dressed as a woman who had disguised herself as a man before returning to womanhood again, promising to kiss the men in the audience, somehow and in some way straddling a line between man and w
oman that frightened me, excited me and stirred something in me that I did not and perhaps still do not understand.

  My father, standing next to me, had been watching me and my reaction to the play for the entirety of the performance. After it was over, he took me by the hand and led me back to where the company had assembled, pushing against the crowd to do so. He then abruptly thrust me in front of the troupe’s manager and sometimes actor, John Heminges.

  “This is my boy, John Rice,” he gruffly told the silent Heminges. “I’d like to apprentice him to you, since it seems clear to me now that this is the life he was meant for. He’s not meant to be a tanner, of that I am certain.”

  Whether Father honestly believed that what he was doing was the best for me, or whether he was relieved to find a way to send his disappointment of a son out of his sight is a question I’ve never resolved to my own satisfaction.

  Heminges, who I would come to know quite well as a master and teacher and ultimately as a friend, looked me up and down. My appearance was clearly pleasing to him, and he spoke gently and kindly to me, asking me questions about myself and my schooling. He allowed himself a small smile when he heard me speak, my voice still as high-pitched as that of any girl. After hearing me sing a hymn and recite a portion of one of Virgil’s eclogues, he turned to my father, telling him that since the time had come for Alexander to begin moving from women’s to men’s roles, he and the company were in need of a young boy such as myself to hopefully, if my talent so allowed, take his place.

  While he and my father stepped away to discuss the details of my future career, the cost of my apprenticeship, and, indeed, whether I should be accepted as his apprentice at all, I looked around at the group of actors, excited and nervous. All thoughts of my mother’s wish for me vanished. Instead, I found myself hoping beyond hope that my future would be with them, for they and the life they had seemed to offer me a way of escaping my home and becoming what I knew, beyond a moment’s doubt, I wanted to be and was meant to be.