with annoyances and insults. Resolutely silent, Kean disregarded the behaviour of those around him. Long delay and poverty, however, fretted him out of all patience, and he is said to have been meditating suicide when he was told that his début in the ‘Merchant of Venice’ was announced in the ‘Times.’ The cast, exceptionally poor even for Drury Lane in those days, included Miss Smith (Portia), Powell (Antonio), Rae (Bassanio), Phillips (Lorenzo), Oxberry (Lancelot), Wrench (Gratiano), and ‘Mr. Kean from the Theatre Royal, Exeter’ (Shylock). The solitary rehearsal was walked through on the day of performance amidst loudly expressed forebodings of failure. Kean was spoken of as Mr. Arnold's ‘hard bargain.’ ‘This will never do, Mr. Kean,’ said Raymond, the stage-manager; ‘it is an innovation, Sir, it is totally different from anything that has ever been done on these boards.’ ‘I wish it to be so’ was the response. The evening was raw and cold, and the house less than a third full. Acquiring courage as he progressed, Kean gripped the public, until, after the scene with Tubal, the actors stood looking at him from the wings in irrepressible admiration and surprise, and at the close, amidst such cheering as the walls of Drury Lane had long forgotten, the curtain fell on an undisputed triumph.
Pecuniary reward was not slow to follow. Fifty pounds was presented to him after his performance of Shylock, and 100l. after that of Richard III. Shylock was repeated on 1 Feb. The receipts then sprang from 164l., received on the first night at the doors, to 325l., and by the 19th the significant announcement was put forth that no orders would be admitted on the nights of Kean's performance. After the third representation of Shylock, Whitbread asked Kean to breakfast, for the purpose of ratifying the agreement. When Kean had signed the original document, Whitbread tore it up and substituted another, giving him a weekly salary of 20l. He was freed, moreover, from a vexatious weekly charge of 2l. for a substitute at the Olympic. At a date not far subsequent the committee gave him 5,000l., four shareholders respectively gave him a share in the theatre, and private gifts poured upon him. Richard III was acted on 12 Feb. It increased Kean's reputation, but exhausted him so thoroughly that he could not act for a week. Sir Henry Halford was sent to him by the committee, and he was entreated to take care of a life so precious to the stage. Hamlet was played on 12 March, Othello on 5 May, Iago on 7 May, and Luke in ‘Riches’ on 25 May. In his first season he acted Shylock fifteen times, Richard twenty-five, Hamlet eight, Othello ten, Iago seven or eight, and Luke four. Whitbread, at the annual meeting of the proprietors at the beginning of the following season, found few terms too flattering for the man who had replenished the coffers of Drury Lane. In his first season the receipts for a single performance had reached 673l., and the management cleared altogether 20,000l. An account of a visit to Kean at this period speaks of money lying in heaps on the mantelpiece, table, and sofa, and his son playing on the floor with ‘some scores of guineas, then a rare coin.’ The proceeds of Kean's first benefit are said to have amounted to 1,150l. But during even his first season his recklessness became apparent. Sometimes he would walk his horse, which he named Shylock, up and down the theatre steps in the early morning, or gallop wildly along the turnpike roads, sleeping with his steed in the stable on his return home. Among those whom his reputation soon attracted was his mother, on whom Kean settled an annual allowance of 50l., which was paid until her death. He is reported, indeed, probably in error, to have been uncertain as to his birth, and to have paid two women as his mother. His relationship with Anne Carey he would not openly acknowledge, and he was at first indignant with his mother for introducing to him a certain Henry Darnley, who persisted in calling him brother.
Criticism pronounced almost unanimously in Kean's favour. Hazlitt, after taking some exception, subsequently removed, spoke of him with high eulogy. West, the president of the Royal Academy, said that his face in Richard kept him awake all night. Kemble, who credited him with terrible earnestness and brilliancy of execution, conceived a jealousy of him, which afterwards extended to his family. Genest, writing later, was, on the other hand, strangely hostile to Kean, and denied that he was a ‘universal favourite …’ ‘Kean's voice,’ he adds, ‘was very bad; his figure was not only diminutive but insignificant; his natural appearance, when not counteracted by dress, was mean’ (Account of the English Stage, viii. 413). Some depreciator said sneeringly, ‘I understand that he is an admirable harlequin,’ and drew from ‘Jack’ Bannister the reply, ‘That I am certain of, for he has jumped over all our heads.’ Meantime the magazines were full of Kean, and biographies, each more misleading than the other, chronicled preposterous doings. Kean declined to give information, and did not contradict fictitious stories of his noble origin and his education at Eton, which were circulated by his former
