I Was Cleopatra by Dennis Abrams

Author:Dennis Abrams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
Published: 2018-03-20T19:22:41+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

In which a most audacious

assassination attempt by

the nefarious Guy Fawkes

is thwarted, thereby saving

the lives of the royal family

and all the members of

Parliament, and finally, Master

Shakespeare expresses his

confidence in me

Throughout the month of October, due to the closing of the theaters, the King’s Men toured the areas outside London. There, performing where and when we could, we put forth the plays we had recently staged at the Globe, alongside other older plays still popular in the provinces. These included the pastoral romance Mucedorus, written by a playwright whose name has since disappeared from the records, and Jonson’s Volpone, a fine play indeed, but one, as might be assumed, I had no role in. Master Jonson was still the only person not persuaded that I should be allowed to act at the Globe at all, much the less in one of his plays.

And it is perhaps by our own good fortune or the providence of God that we were traveling from Barnstaple to Saffron Walden when word reached us that the Gunpowder Treason Plot, led by the Catholic fiend Guy Fawkes, had been discovered, and the conspirators were quickly being brought to justice.

I have until now avoided writing about the political issues of that time, focusing instead on myself and the theater, but since the plot was so grievous and did impact both my myself and my career in ways most unexpected, I feel it is incumbent on me to give a brief retelling of the events.

The plot, led by the villainous Robert Catesby, a rebel against both his king and his God, was meant to blow up the palace where sat the Parliament for its opening session on the 5th of November, in the hopes that it would bring about a popular uprising. The schemers wanted to bring Princess Elizabeth, James’s nine-year-old daughter, to the throne as the new Catholic head of state. The traitorous Guy Fawkes was given charge of the explosives.

But, by the grace of God, the fiendish plot was made known to the authorities in a letter sent to William Parker, fourth Baron Monteagle, and so it was that around midnight of the 4th of November, Fawkes was discovered in the labyrinth of tunnels deep under the Houses of Parliament, guarding thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. This would have been enough to turn the House of Lords to rubble, killing everyone within, including our Sovereign Lord the King; his most excellent and dearest wife, the gracious Queen Anne; the most noble Prince Henry, their elder son, and so the future hope and joy of England; along with the lords spiritual and temporal, the reverend judges of the realm, the knights, citizens and burgesses of Parliament; and assorted others of the king’s faithful subjects and servants, all of whom, with no respect paid to majesty, degree, dignity, sex, age or place, would have been most barbarously destroyed and swallowed up in the explosion.

In truth, had the evil scheme not been prevented, it has been said that more than thirty

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