Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And — like the baseless fabric of this vision —
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Indeed, it seemed that our revels, with the passing of our friend and inspiration Shakespeare, had truly ended.
I continued working with my friends and fellow actors for nearly ten additional years, finally becoming a shareholder and officially entering the ranks of the King’s Men with a livery allowance in the spring of 1621. During that time I played a variety of roles and continued to board at Heminges’s, where I continued to share a bed with George until I followed in Alexander’s path and married.
Her name was Lucy Abbott, the daughter of a wine merchant whose shop was near to the Globe. We would often exchange glances as I walked by deep in thought about whichever role I would be playing that day. Those glances grew to nods and greetings, until finally, Heminges, aware of what was taking place, took it upon himself to introduce me to Lucy and her father. And while Mr. Abbott was disappointed that I was a mere actor, the fact that I was with the King’s Men was enough of an acknowledgment of royal favor that he agreed to allow us to court, and then, in due time, to marry.
Our marriage was a good one, although the feelings of closeness and friendship that I felt for Alexander were lacking. On the evenings I was unable to get home, I spent the night at Heminges’s, sharing the bed with George for whom I grew to feel the same fondness that Alexander had undoubtedly felt for me. I would hold him close to keep ourselves warm, indulging in the same sort of activities Alexander had with me, and seemed, as time went on, to share my nights equally between him and Lucy.
It is here that I must share the sad news that within a year of our wedding, Lucy gave birth to a son, whom we named Alexander. However, as God willed it, both Lucy and our son were dead within days of his birth. I mourned her loss — although not to be compared to my love for Alexander, I did have feelings of fond friendship for Lucy, and I do still miss the time we had and her companionship.
Once again alone, I left our home and returned to living exclusively at Heminges’s, where I paid for food and lodging, and shared a room and bed and affection with George, who seemed pleased that I had come back. But although he fully returned my friendship and affection, and he was in all respects a dear companion, he could not ever make up for all I had lost.
With the loss of Lucy and my dear Alexander, it seemed to me that I had lost my way. My acting had become rote and mechanical — I was reading my lines without meaning and my words without thought. My very existence itself seemed to be without meaning or purpose. I knew that my time as an actor was coming to an end.
On the 7th of May 1625, I, along with the rest of the King’s Men, attended the funeral of King James I. Since with the death of His Royal Majesty we were no longer, as it were, the King’s Men, it seemed an appropriate time to bring my life on the stage to an end.
For my new life, I intend, at last, to fulfill my mother’s wish for me and devote myself to a God I have for too long not given sufficient attention to, committed as I have been to myself and my personal glory.
The time for that life, for my life as an actor and becoming persons that I am not, has come to an end.
An Ending and a Beginning
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 the 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.
Farewell then to that life.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I Was Cleopatra is largely a work of my imagination.
John Rice did exist and was a boy actor at the Globe. The facts of his family, childhood and apprenticeship are unknown. Given the years that he was at the Globe with the King’s Men, and the few times he appears in the historical records, it is possible to take an educated guess as to the roles he played, but they are suppositions.
His relationships with Masters Heminges and Shakespeare, his friendships with Alexander and George, the story of his first marriage to “Lucy” (her name is unknown) and his relationship with King James are, again, based on my own assumptions, knowing what is known about all those involved.
After leaving the King’s Men, John Rice lived in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and joined St. Saviour’s as a clerk in or around 1625. In 1630 he oversaw the will of Heminges, and in that same year, at the age of forty, he married Frances Legat and the couple proceeded to have six children over the course of the next eight years.
Frances died (although the date is not known), and John married Anne Westebrooke in 1644. He died ten years later, in 1654, and was buried in the church of Tarring Neville.
In his last will and testament, he described himself as “John Rice of Tarring Neville in the County of Sussex clerk being sick in body but of perfect memory.”
When the first collected edition of the plays of William Shakespeare was published in 1623, assembled and edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell, it included a list under the heading “The Names of the Principal Featured Players in These Plays.”
John Rice is one of only twenty-six actors on the list.
Dennis Abrams is the southern correspondent for Publishers Weekly. He has written more than thirty young adult biographies and history books. He is also the author of The Play’s the Thing, a complete young adult guide to the plays of William Shakespeare. I Was Cleopatra is his first novel. He lives in Houston.
Groundwood Books is an independent Canadian children's publisher based in Toronto. Our authors and illustrators are highly acclaimed both in Canada and internationally, and our books are loved by children around the world. We look for books that are unusual; we are not afraid of books that are difficult or potentially controversial; and we are particularly committed to publishing books for and about children whose experiences of the world are under-represented elsewhere.
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