entire performance was said by Westland Marston, one of the first of recent critics, to be Hogarthian. In the ‘Corsican Brothers’ he was most popular, and made most money. His Mephistopheles was also good. In comedy, Ford, Mr. Oakley, and Benedict were his best parts. His life was worthy and honoured, and his domestic surroundings were happy. An infantine and turbulent vanity involved him in many disputes, from which he extricated himself by sterling good nature and good sense.
[Personal recollections; works cited; Tallis's Dramatic Magazine and Drawing-Room Table Book; Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean, by John William Cole, 2 vols. 1859; Some Recollections of our Recent Actors, by Westland Marston, 2 vols. 1888; Theatrical Times; Morley's Journal of a London Playgoer; Era newspaper, January and February 1868; Sunday Times newspaper, various years; Era Almanack, various years; Dibdin's Edinburgh Stage; History of the Theatre Royal, Dublin; Genest's Account of the English Stage.]
KEAN, EDMUND (1787–1833), actor, the son of Anne Carey, hawker and itinerant actress, was born on 4 Nov. 1787 in the chambers occupied by his maternal grandfather, George Saville Carey [q. v.], through whom his supposed descent is traced to George Savile, the celebrated marquis of Halifax. His father is said to have been either Edmund or Aaron Kean, brothers, of Irish descent, who with a third brother, Moses, and a sister, Mrs. Price, lived at 9 St. Martin's Lane. Deserted by his mother when an infant, Kean was sheltered by a couple by whom he was picked up in a doorway in Frith Street, Soho. It was probably, however, through his mother that he found his way either to Her Majesty's Theatre, where, according to the very untrustworthy records of his life supplied after his rise to eminence, he represented a Cupid lying at the feet of Sylvia and Cymon in a ballet of Noverre, or to Drury Lane, where he is said, in 1790, to have been selected for his black eyes once more to personate Cupid. At the latter house he appeared in the next year as a demon, undergoing a training so severe from the posture-master that he was compelled to wear irons to prevent permanent dislocation of his limbs, and played a page in ‘Love makes a Man’ and in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor.’ The first attempts at education he received, against the will of his mother, through the charity of a Jew at a school in Orange Court, Leicester Square, subsequently exchanged for one kept by a Mr. King in Chapel Street, Soho, whither he was sent by his aunt, Mrs. Price. In 1795 he ran away from his home in Ewer Street, Southwark, walked to Portsmouth, and shipped as a cabin-boy on a vessel bound for Madeira. Disliking the work, he counterfeited deafness and paralysis as the result of a cold, was removed to a hospital in Madeira, puzzled the doctors, and was sent home as a patient. Returning to London, he took refuge with his uncle, Moses Kean, a ventriloquist, who gave him lessons in elocution. Further instruction in acting was obtained from Miss Tidswell, an actress at Drury Lane, who, owing to her kindness to him, was for some time regarded as his mother. He was also sent to a day school in Green Street, Leicester Square, and is said to have received lessons, presumably gratuitous if not wholly imaginary, in dancing, fencing, and singing from D'Egvile, Angelo, and Incledon respectively. His newly acquired knowledge he put to use in the street, singing and dancing at tavern doors or at country fairs, to which, in spite of all efforts to confine him, he ran away. Once more at Drury Lane he played Prince Arthur to the King John of Kemble and the Constance of Mrs. Siddons, probably in May 1801. Mrs. Charles Kemble [see Kemble, Maria Theresa] overheard him reciting Richard III in the green-room, and thought him clever. After the death of Moses Kean he was supported by Miss Tidswell, who induced him seriously to study various Shakespearean characters, notably Richard III. A Mrs. Clarke, at whose house he gave recitations, supplied him with further instruction, and for a time lifted him into respectable surroundings, setting him even to shape little plays out of episodes in the ‘Faerie Queen.’ His roving and irresponsible disposition, however, could not be controlled, and he ran away to Bartholomew Fair. Acting as a tumbler in Saunders's circus, he fell and broke both his legs—an accident from which he never quite recovered. He next gave, in a room in a Portsmouth inn, an entertainment of recitation, singing, and acrobatic evolutions, repeated it at the Sans Souci Theatre in Leicester Place, London, and read the ‘Merchant of Venice’ at the Rolls Rooms. Subsequently he filled an engagement for twenty nights at the York Theatre, playing as his first part Hamlet, succeeded on following evenings by Hastings and Cato. An engagement at Richardson's show followed. On Easter Monday 1803, for a weekly salary of fifteen shillings, he played at Sheerness Norval and harlequin. At Windsor Master Carey's recitations were given by command before George III. After his rise to eminence he was always anxious to lift himself out of the slough of his early surroundings, and a story was circulated,
