CHAPTER XXVII.

EDMUND KEAN-CONTINUED.

BETWEEN the last named period, and the time when Edmund Kean played Virginius, there is but one character in which he produced any extraordinary effect-namely, King Lear. This sustained, but I do not think it increased, his glory. His other characters only seem to glide past, and disappear. Such are Richard, Duke of York, in a compilation from several of Shakspeare's plays; Barabbas, in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," the heaviness of which he relieved by a song, sweetly warbled; Selim, in Dimond's melodramatic "Bride of Abydos;" Young Norval, in which he was graceful and affecting; King John, which did not disturb the repose of Kemble; and Alexander the Great, which could as little. stir the dead sleep of Verbruggen. Something more effective was his Brutus, in Payne's compilation. The scene of his simulated folly was skilfully played; that with the son whom he condemns to death, full of tenderness and gravity. He could not sustain Miss Porter's "Switzerland," and he would not support Mr. Bucke's "Italians." Soane literally measured him for Malvesi, in the "Dwarf of Naples," and misfitted him grievously. Mr. Twiss had no better success with the "Carib Chief," in which Kean played Omreah; and my recollections of his Rolla are not so agreeable as those which I have of Young, and even Wallack. Well do I remember his Coriolanus, for which he was physically unfitted; but only a great actor could have played the scene of the candidateship, and that of the death, as Kean did-who, however, gave more pleasure to the followers of the Kemble school by this performance, than he did to his own. He made up for all, by the grandeur, the touchingness, and the sublimity of his King Lear. It was throughout thoroughly original, in conception and in execution, and by it he maintained his pre-eminency, and sustained, as I have said, without increasing his old glory. He did not

quite realize his own assertion: "I will make the audience as mad as I shall be."

His laurels were menaced. Frederick Yates came from the camp, and flashed a promise in tragedy which moved the hearts of playgoers, who saw his later devotion to comedy with early regret, but an ultimate delight. Mr. Macready was steadily rising from melodrama to the highest walks of tragedy, and his golden. opportunity came in Virginius. Hitherto, Kean had been shaking the secondary actors of the old Kemble type, into fits of jealousy, fear, disgust, and admiration. Expressly for him did Knowles write the "Virginius," which gave a lasting celebrity to Mr. Macready. Already, however, had a play on the subject, by Soane, been accepted at Drury Lane, and in the Roman father Kean was for the first time designedly opposed to the younger actor. He utterly failed; while Mr. Macready, in the part written expressly, and by an able hand, for Kean, won a noble victory. Kean might have said as the captured French Marshal said to Marlborough:-"Change sides with me, and I'll fight it out again, to a very different issue."

A range through his principal parts, and a running salute of thundering puffs on the part of Elliston, heralded his visit to America in 1820. He played at Liverpool before embarking, and like George Frederick Cooke, had a hit at the audience before he left them. They were the coldest people, he said, in whose presence he had ever acted. That was true; but though Liverpool was chary of approbation, it had applauded ungrateful Edmund more cordially than any other actor.

From his first trip to America he brought back much solid gold, a detestation of the Boston people, who would not patronize the theatre at an unfashionable season of the year, and one of the toe-bones of Cooke, over whose translated and mutilated remains, he raised the monument of which I have already spoken.

Some ill-health he brought back with him too; but he rallied, drank, relapsed, and struggled into strength again. It was wasted on Miss Baillie's "De Montfort;" though parts of this were played in his grandest style. He seemed conscious that something was expected of him by the public, and he flung himself, as it were, at every thing. He played Hastings to the Jane Shore of a Miss

Edmiston-whose success was predicted by aristocratic poets, and who is now, I believe, painfully "strolling." With Sir Pertinax he did not move the dead Macklin as his Shylock may have done; though it was better played, save in the accent, than any living actor could have played it. His Osmond gave some dignity to the "Castle Spectre," and his Wolsey but little to Henry VIII."

For Miss Tidswell's farewell benefit, after forty years of useful subalternship, he attempted Don Felix. He would have done inore for her had he been asked; for in his breadless, boyish days, she had beaten, taught, .fed, and clothed him-till Nance Carey claimed him for her own, and stole all his earnings. Edmund's good impulses made him fail in affection to this parent. Thinking of Miss Tidswell, he used to say-" If she wasn't my mother, why was she kind to me?"

For his own benefit, in this season of 1821-2, he played the Roman actor, Octavian, and Tom Tug-the song in which last part he sang with great feeling. The whole proceeds of this benefit he gave to the fund for the starving Irish. It was not exactly like Mrs. Haller's charity, who gives her master's wine to the sick poor; but that virtue, which is said to begin at hoine, might have sent the amount in a different direction.

In November, 1822, he played out the first of his two great struggles with Young, at Drury Lane. Since Quin and Garrick, or Garrick and Barry, no conjunction of great names moved the theatrical world like this. Both men put out all their powers, and the public profited by the magnificent display. Kean and Young acted together-Othello and Iago, Lothaire and Guiscard, Jaffier and Pierre, Alexander and Clytus, Posthumus and Iachimo, eliciting enthusiasm by all, but by none so much as by Othello and Iago. The two great wrestlers won equal honor; but that was not enough for one of them. "How long sir," said Kean to Elliston, the manager, "How long am I to play with that—Jesuit, Young?"

Certainly, if he feared competition with experienced actors, Kean was very encouraging to beginners. "You are the best Iago I ever played to," he once remarked to an earnest, youthful, gentleman at Edinburgh. The latter smiled; and Kean asked him

wherefore? "Because, sir," was the answer, "I know of seven poor lagos, to whom you have kindly said the same thing !"

In a revival of Shakspeare's "King Lear," Kean showed good taste, sublime acting, and an appreciation of opportunity for selfdistinction. He was not always equally in the vein, but on some nights he excelled all he had done before. Genest says, that "his personal appearance was better than Kemble's or Young's, and his manner more natural. In the mad scenes he seemed to copy Murphy's account of Garrick." The only drawback I have heard of to this noble, and last of his noble and complete performances was, that he was neither tall enough nor strong enough to carry off the body of Cordelia (Mrs. W. West.)

He might have begun a fresh carcer, however, from this new starting-point, had he been so minded. But this success did not brace him to new effort, except a quietly ineffectual one to make the world forget the Stranger of John Kemble. His failing strength was probably the chief cause of his avoiding or refusing to appear in the same piece with Mr. Macready, of whom he rather rudely remarked,—" He is no actor, sir; he is a player!"

But the satirist himself was fast ceasing to be either. He had never recovered from the madness which he prophesied would follow his success in London. Gradually he lost all self-control, plunged into terrible excesses, courted rather than fell into evil company, took tribute, indeed, most willingly of the noble and intellectual who heaped rich gifts upon him, but he scorned or feared their society. He affected to feel that they invited him. simply to stare at him, and that they would have despised him as a poor actor. IIe had not common sense enough to see that when the noble and intellectual opened their doors to him they rendered graceful homage to his genius,-and I have heard that where he did accept such homage, and was himself subdued to the refinements of the society where it was liberally, yet delicately rendered, his easy bearing was that of a man who had not lost his self-respect, and his manners and conversation emphatically "charming."

But this was under restraint, and to be thus "charming" was irksome to Edinund Kean;-by this time it had become almost impossible, and he could charm only those on whom the magic

was not worth expending. He had not broken his word to his wife that she should ride in her carriage, nor to his son-that he should go to Eton,-but he had not made the first happier, nor the second the more attached to him. His home, indeed, was broken up, and in the season of 1824-5, after failing in the poor melodramatic part of Masaniello, came out the great scandal-that he loved his neighbor's wife better than his own. All its necessary consequences followed,-a fierce, an almost ruffianly hostility on the part of his audiences, damage to his fortune, and irretrievable ruin to his reputation. Reckless and defiant as he was, he was glad to endure exile, for such was his voyage to, and sojourn in, America during this and the following year.

Let me notice that he bore himself in presence of a cruel audience, with an almost ferocious courage. His pride was greater than his humiliation. As at Drury, he applied every strong epithet in his part to the howling pit, so, when running his erratic course through the minor theatres, he could treat audiences that were ignorant, as well as insolent, with strong terms and lofty contempt. He had one night played Othello to a "Coburg" public. Iago was acted by Cobham, the performer who had once vainly attempted to dethrone him, by acting Richard at Covent Garden to a house, however, which would not listen to him, to the end. The New-Cut costermongers adopted him; they applauded him, on this particular night, more than they did the great Kean, who received £50 for condescending to exhibit himself in Othello. Nevertheless, at the fall of the curtain, there was such an uproar in front, apparently a call for Kean, that he came slowly forward, and bluntly asked, "What do you want?" A thousand voices answered, "You! you!" Well, said Kean after a slight peroration, "I have played in every civilized country where English is the language of the people; but I never acted to an audience of such unmitigated brutes as you are!" He walked slowly off, as Cobham, to a shout for him from the sweet voices of his Lambeth-marsh patrons, rushed on the stage, proud and radiant, to tell Edmund's "unmitigated brutes" that they were the most enlightened and liberal audience that had ever sat as judges of acting, and that the happiest night of his life was