But alas, this performance ended in disaster due to the copious amounts of drinking by the masque’s amateur performers. The lady who played the role of the Queen of Sheba, while carrying precious gifts to the two kings in the audience, miscounted the steps, or so it seemed, dropping the presents into the king of Denmark’s lap before falling completely atop of him. Naturally there was much confusion and shouting for servants and napkins, and after His Majesty’s clothing and person were put back in reasonable order, he rose to dance with the Queen of Sheba but himself fell down, caused, I was later told, by many hours of feasting and drinking. He was carried into the palace and laid on his bed, his garments, as a servant breathlessly told us later that night, still covered by the remains of the wine, cream, jelly, cakes and other goodly consumables that the queen had bestowed upon him. Despite his hasty departure from the festivities, the entertainment continued, even though the participants who were in a state of drunkenness outnumbered those who were not by an increasingly sizable amount.
And again, truth be told, our performance of Macbeth at Hampton Court in August, while I believe effective, was difficult for all of the performers since, once more, the members of the court had enjoyed a goodly amount of wine and strong spirits before the play began. The majority of the audience talked among themselves during the drama, and by the end of the play, the soft snores of His Majesty King James I could distinctly be heard during Burbage’s final speeches.
By late October the plague had finally retreated in London, so after several months’ touring, we returned home to begin work on new plays — plays that we would rehearse and perform at the Globe in preparation for our command performances for the king over the Christmas-Candlemas season.
I suggested at the opening of this chapter that I would begin to speak of my life off the stage. But, truth be told, during this period, I had no life apart from the theater. The hours working at the Globe were long, and I was playing different roles on stage as often as six days a week, leaving me no time of my own in which to explore London, to meet new people and to make new friends, or even, unfortunately, to spend time with friends I had already made.
On rare occasions, I would not be so exhausted at the end of the day that I would then go for supper at a nearby tavern with one or another of my fellow players at the Globe. On even rarer occasions, I would be able to spend time with Alexander, now the father of two, who while exhausted himself and still somewhat aggrieved that my roles were now exceeding his both in length and importance, would come with me to dine and drink. On those nights when his consumption of beer was high, as was more and more often the case, rather than make the longer journey to his own home, he would come with me to Heminges’s where he would, as in our younger days, share my bed and hold me safe and warm in his arms.
Those nights were infrequent and grew even more so as Christmas approached. Despite the fact that my new role in Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter, which related the story of the bloodthirsty Borgia family of Italy, was compared to roles I had previously undertaken relatively straightforward, it still involved a great deal of time to prepare.
As I read through and learned my role, it became evident that there were strong similarities between Lucrezia Borgia and Lady Macbeth, similarities that would help me in my portrayal. They begin early on when Lucrezia calls upon the spirits, as did the lady, to help her as she prepares not to kill the king, but her own husband, Gismond:
You grisly daughters of grim Erebus,
Which spit out vengeance from your viperous hairs,
Infuse a three-fold vigour in these arms,
Immarble more my strong, indurate heart,
To consummate the plot of my revenge.
These lines lacked, I noted even then, the poetic subtlety that Master Shakespeare had imparted to the lady. But as an actor, I could see and appreciate how the more direct approach of Barnes, if spoken with the proper amount of unlady-like ferocity, might please and excite an audience in ways that Shakespeare could not.
And again, in what I saw as my best scene, when I, or Lucrezia as it were, stabs her husband in such a manner as to stir the emotions of the audience, while lacking Shakespeare’s consummate artistry, there was for me, as an actor, an opportunity to shout and gesticulate straight upwards to the heavens. After placing my hand over my husband’s mouth to prevent him from speaking or crying out for help, I pull out his dagger with a grand gesture and most kindly offer to gag him:
Peace, wretched villain! Then receive this quickly:
Or by the living powers of heaven I’ll kill thee!
After gagging him, I was to take a piece of paper out of my bosom and order him to write the words that would let the world know that I was innocent of any sins I had previously been accused of, and that he had taken his life by his own hand. I was then to tell him with a flourish and as much bravado as I could muster that he would die by my hand alone, and while feverishly acting, stab him six times.
After much more evildoing, Lucrezia is herself poisoned, which again granted me the opportunity to play on the grandest scale imaginable. But I can now see clearly that the drama lacked what Shakespeare gave to Macbeth — poetry and artistry, along with the sense that the lady, for all her faults most grievous, was still human, something that Barnes was not able to or did not care to impart to Lucrezia.
I feel a foul stink in my nostrils;
Some stink is vehement and hurts my brain;
My cheeks both burn and sting. Give me my glass.
Out, out, for shame! I see the blood itself
Dispersed and inflame’d! Give me some water!
…
My brains intoxicate, my face is scalded!
Hence with the glass! Cool, cool my face! Rank poison
Is minister’d to bring me to my death!
I feel the venom boiling in my veins!
…
Who painted my fair face with these foul spots?
You see them in my soul, deformed blots!
Lines such as these, I must allow, were both easier to remember and easier to present to an audience than those of Shakespeare. Indeed, it was the lack of depth in Lucrezia’s character that made it in some ways a relief to portray her. She lacked a complex character that I would need to understand fully in order to successfully personate her on stage, so I was able to rely solely on oratory, reading her lines as mere empty words. The acting advice Master Shakespeare had given me on the occasion of our first meeting was useless in playing Lucrezia; indeed, doing the opposite of what he taught would be the only way to play her. It was in some ways a respite to me as an actor to just, as it were, act.
However, I must also allow that the challenge of playing Shakespeare’s characters stirred something in me that personating Barnes’s characters did not. Working to understand Shakespeare’s characters, and working on finding something within myself that would help me to understand and personate them, brought me the deepest satisfaction.
I was now, I say with some amount of pride, at the moment of my career in which playing a female role had become a simple matter of allowing myself to become female. The challenge now was in playing a female who was very different from myself.
The next role I took on, one written again with me in mind by Master Shakespeare, would be, I think, the most challenging I dared to undertake.
Chapter Seventeen
In which I am Cleopatra
Once again I was asked by Master Shakespeare to attend to him at his lodgings. There I found him in his usual attire. His desk was again covered with papers encircled by books, and one, Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, the volume of Parallel Lives I’d noted on my first visit, was open to a chapter entitled “Life of Antony.” Tybalt was happily purring next to the hearth.
“I have nearly completed what I hope will be our next new play, The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra. T
here is still some work to be done with it, but I plan on finishing within the next week, time permitting. But before I continue, I need enquire of you, do you think you are up to the challenge of performing Cleopatra? The role will be, when all is said and done, the longest you’ve played for me by far, as well as, I strongly suspect, the most difficult. But if you play it as I know you are capable of so doing, it will be the role that will make your name throughout London.
“But first let me ask you this, John. What do you know of Cleopatra?”
I spent a moment summoning up what I had learned in primary school, during what seemed like an earlier life, before telling him that I knew she had been the queen of Egypt; that she was known for her beauty and her ability to use that beauty to win first the heart of Julius Caesar, with whom she had borne a son, and then after Caesar’s death, the heart of Marc Antony, whom she made her next lover, luring him away from his responsibilities in Rome. And then after their military defeat at (and I confess I struggled to remember the name of the battle of Actium) Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves.
“Very good,” Shakespeare said. “Your education has served you well. What I hope to achieve is a character who goes beyond the common perception of Cleopatra as simply a female seductress who used her beauty to bend the will of men to gain her own ends. I want to bring out all of her character, all of her infinite variety, and turn Plutarch’s prose story into one of poetry and, dare I say, magic.
“Look more closely, Master Rice,” he told me, “at my copy of Plutarch. It should be open to the description of Cleopatra arriving by barge to meet Antony for the first time. Would you read it aloud for me?”
She herself reclined beneath a canopy spangled with gold, adorned like Venus in a painting, while boys like Loves in paintings stood on either side and fanned her. Likewise also the fairest of her serving-maidens, attired like Nereïds and Graces, were stationed, some at the rudder-sweeps, and others at the reefing-ropes. Wondrous odours from countless incense-offerings diffused themselves along the river-banks. Of the inhabitants, some accompanied her on either bank of the river from its very mouth, while others went down from the city to behold the sight.
“I admire Plutarch greatly,” Shakespeare told me, “but I took it upon myself to make —” and here he smiled knowingly at me, “assorted improvements. Let me read this to you if you will:
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amourous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description; she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
“A few changes here and there, John, made, I think, all the difference. Look,” he said, as eager as a proud schoolboy to show me what he had done, “look at just the first line. Where Plutarch wrote, ‘in a barge with gilded poop,’ I wrote:
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold …
“Can you hear the difference, John? And of greater importance, when you envision the scene, do you see the difference? Whereas Plutarch, a great historian, mind you, gave a mere description, what I did was add reaction. Where he wrote about the golden poop and the purple sails, I added ‘and so perfumed that / The winds were love-sick with them.’ That is what I have strived to do throughout the play, to create, I hope … poetry.”
Here he stopped somewhat shamefacedly to ask me, “You will keep this secret between us, will you not, John? It wouldn’t do if the rest of the men knew how simple it is for me to create.”
And then, with a cough, he continued.
“That scene, my beautiful Cleopatra, is what I would like for you to bear in mind when reading the play, and then later while acting it. See in your mind the beauty of the queen, your beauty, John, making such a grand appearance that the winds themselves are love-sick for you. Plutarch describes you as being ‘adorned like Venus in a painting.’ I want you to see yourself and for our audiences to see you not just dressed as Venus, but indeed as Venus, the goddess of love herself. Do you think you’re capable of doing that, John?”
I nodded, although I was not entirely confident that I was capable of doing, of being what he asked.
“Good. Now, I think you’re ready to learn to become Cleopatra in a different manner than we have before. I am not going to lead you through your lines, at least not at first. What I want you to do is take this.” Here he handed me another copy of the manuscript that he had had prepared for me especially. “And read it well. Come back to me in three days and tell me how you see Cleopatra and what you think you need do to bring her to life.
“Just one more word from me, John, before I send you on your way. Your responsibility, your job as an actor, is to make Cleopatra a tragic heroine. She is blamed, and rightfully so I would say, for the destruction of Marc Antony. But — and this is going to be crucial to the play — you must make clear to the audience that her final act, that of taking her own life, is one of such bravery and courage and nobility that they will see her as a heroine, perhaps of equal greatness to the noble Antony himself.
“Now, go read and study your lines, and return hence in three days.”
So between performances and rehearsals, before arriving at the Globe and then after returning to my room, I read the play over and over again, learning the lines, trying to envision myself as Cleopatra, thinking about how I might move and speak and gesture and change myself from a sixteen-year-old English boy into a thirty-nine-year-old Egyptian queen. What in me was in her? How could I make an audience believe that I was not John Rice, or at least forget that I was John Rice on the stage, and was instead Cleopatra?
Shakespeare was correct when he told me that this role would be the most difficult one I had ever been given. While I had proved myself in earlier roles, I had increasing doubts that I would be able to do this one, and considered for a moment asking him if one of the other boy actors might perhaps be a better choice. But I also knew, the more I read and learned my role, that if I did not dare to become Cleopatra, if I did not screw my courage to the sticking place, I would disappoint Masters Shakespeare and Heminges. And so on returning to discuss the role with her creator, I boldly announced that I was ready.
“John, that is most excellent news. While writing it, I could not and still cannot imagine any other boy actor but you capable of portraying my Cleopatra. Burbage will of course portray Antony. As with you, I cannot imagine anyone other than him in the role, and along with that, you do work well with him. Also, I thought Alexander Cook might portray your maidservant, Iras — the two of you were friends as I recall. So let me ask you, my young thespian, what are your thoughts on the role? Do you have any questions?”
I could feel my face turn white, then red when Shakespeare mentioned my beloved Alexander, who had once played only leading roles but would now be featured in a small role as my servant. The news was unsettling, and while I felt for Alexander and wondered how it might affect our friendship, it reminded me that I was now the age that he had been when he was assigned the best roles of our repertory. Within a few years at best, I would be where Alexander was now, playing in support of a new boy actor.
And that is when I realized how it was that I was Cleopatra.
I told Master Shakesp
eare that I now, at least in part, understood the role. It was true of her, as he wrote, that
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
Her nature, as portrayed in the play, was constantly shifting, indeed of infinite variety. Her passions, her anger, her wit, her constantly shifting temperament were all part of what kept Antony by her side. An ordinary woman such as his Roman wife, Octavia, would never satisfy him, and Cleopatra knew this and played upon him like an actress to ensure that he was entertained and in her thrall.
But, I said, thinking of Alexander and then myself, underlying all that variety was her fear of aging. Her fear of losing her beauty and her allure, her fear of losing Antony to a younger, prettier rival, her fear of no longer being the Cleopatra she thought she was. Age, contrary to the play’s earlier words, would indeed wither her as it does us all. As, I realized, but dared not say aloud, it would me, as it had started to do with Alexander.
I stood waiting for Shakespeare’s response. He sat silently for a moment as though pondering my words, and said only, “I chose my Cleopatra well.”
He continued then, with a bemused look on his face, and asked, “Did you enjoy my little joke about boy actors, John? Remember the moment when, fearful that she will be taken to Rome as Emperor Octavian’s prisoner and put on display, she tells her servants:
… ’tis most certain Iras. Saucy lictors
Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers
Ballad us out o’tune. The quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us and present
Our Alexandrian revels; Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth; and I shall see
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