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.
Chronology/Biography of Edmund Kean:
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.
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.
Places of Interest:
SCOTLAND:
The Isle of Bute.
