Britain Unlimited covers 250 Great British people and what made them famous

Who was Emund Kean? Tragic actor in a naturalistic Style. Date and Place of Birth: 17th March 1789, London, England. Family Background: Bastard son of Ann Carey, itinerant actress and Street hawker and Edmund Kean a mentally unbalanced youth who committed suicide at the age of 22. Education: Taught by Charlotte Tidswell, the mistress of Moses Kean, his father's eldest brother and a member of the Drury Lane Theatre Company. Essential Works: Charlotte Tidswell his guardian was an ex-mistress of Charles Howard the Eleventh Duke of Norfolk and was extremely ambitious for her child. However Edmund was a wilful boy and lived for many years as a stray fighting her example. 1804: At the age of fifteen he set out on his own to go on the stage and joined Samuel Jerrold’s company in Sheerness, Kent for fifteen shillings a week. He was to become a strolling player for the next ten years working on tragedies, comedies, opera and pantomime. The theatrical style then in fashion was that of its leading exponent John Phillip Kemble who was tall and good looking and had a deliberate eloquent delivery. Kean was small with a harsh voice and had to adapt his own style rather than compete with Kemble. 1814: Made his debut at Drury Lane as Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”. He was a sensation and a new style became fashionable. Kean then went on to specialise in other Shakespearean villains, notably Iago, King Richard the Third and Macbeth. He also excelled at playing Othello and Hamlet. Kean used controlled but powerful transitions of voice, volume and facial expressions which led the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to say that Kean played Shakespeare "by flashes of lightning". He was financially successful earning upwards of £12,000 a year but always lived beyond his means trying jealously to guard his reputation as the "Head of the British Stage". 1824: After frequent tours of Scotland he noticed Woodend House (then a cottage). He leased the land and buildings from the Marquess of Bute and moved in with his wife and sister-in-law Susan Chambers in the autumn. His wife hated the place as “damp and sterile” and felt she would be marooned. 1825: Sued for adultery with the wife of a City of London Alderman (Mrs. Cox). A press campaign was started against him and he suffered demonstrations against him both in England and in the United States. He then declined over the next eight years into a drunkard. 1833: Collapsed during a performance of Othello at Covent Garden. Marriage: 1808: Mary Chambers an actress. Places of Interest: SCOTLAND: The Isle of Bute. Date and Place of Death: 15th May 1833, Richmond, Surrey, England Age at Death: 44. Site of Grave: St. Matthias’s Churchyard, Friar’s Stile Road, Richmond, Surrey, England.