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Updated: May 9, 2025
We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those qualifications which are not essential; first, because they are superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit. It is not for his reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy.
Their monopolies, no longer redeemed by the stately genius of the Kembles, the pathos of Miss O'Neill, or the fiery passion of Kean, were already menaced, and were soon about to fall; but the crowd of diminutive but sparkling substitutes, which have since taken their place, had not yet appeared, and half-price at Drury Lane or Covent Garden was a dreary distraction after a morning of desk work.
"She may not survive," said Miss Wilson. "If she's able to stand me one semester, then she'll be compelled to stay the year out." "I am Anna Cresswell," continued the tall girl to Elizabeth. "Mary Wilson's introductions leave much to be desired. She rarely sees fit to mention the names of the people she introduces." Miss Stoner and Miss Kean came up at this juncture.
She had looked forward with so much eagerness to meeting Mr. Kinsella again, and now on the first occasion when they might have had a real conversation, here he was spending the whole time laughing and talking with Julia Kean. She was glad of the diversion of Mrs. Pace's entrance, as it necessarily caused some cessation of what looked to her like a flirtation between Mr. Kinsella and Judy.
Kean, who wanted perfect quiet for the dagger speech, had to keep on saying: "Ssh! ssh!" all through it. "Those carpenters at the side are enough to ruin any acting," he said one night when he came off. "I'm a heavy man, and I can't help it," said Ryder. "Oh, I didn't know it was you," said Mr. Kean but I think he did! One night I was the innocent cause of a far worse disturbance.
When you read of Edmund Kean as, alas! he was later on in life, with mental and physical powers impaired, think of the description those gave of him who knew him best in his earlier years; how amidst all the wildness and half-savage Bohemianism, which the miseries of his life had ensured, he displayed, time after time, the most large-hearted generosity, the tenderest kindness of which human nature is capable.
In Hamlet and Othello he did not equal Betterton; and in the latter, certainly from all one can discover, he was infinitely surpassed by Edmund Kean. In fact Othello was not one of his great parts. But in the wide range of characters which he undertook, Garrick was probably never equalled.
The several actors who have been famed on earth appear at the theatres in Spring Garden. Garrick, Kean, Kemble, Booth, Vandenhoff, Cooke, Macready, Rachel, and Mrs. Siddons, visit us from time to time. Newland Maffit is at present a distinguished actor in the spirit world. People are fools in religion, and worship as divine the most stupid monstrosities ever conceived of!
If a naturally awkward man can simulate the graces of a dancing master, if a naturally graceful man can simulate the limp of a cripple or the clumsiness of a hobbledehoy, if a comparative dwarf like Kean can assume the majesty of a monarch, then he is an actor.
But it is more as a stage reformer than as an actor that he will be remembered. The old happy-go-lucky way of staging plays, with its sublime indifference to correctness of detail and its utter disregard of archaeology, had received its first blow from Kemble and Macready, but Charles Kean gave it much harder knocks and went further than either of them in the good work.
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