except alcohol, and his appearances in London were fitful. He played at times, however, both at the Haymarket and at Drury Lane, where he was seen in Shylock on 16 May 1832. On 12 March 1833, as Richard, he took, unconsciously, farewell of Drury Lane. His last appearance was on 25 March at Covent Garden as Othello, to the Iago of his son and the Desdemona of Ellen Tree [see Kean, Ellen]. In the fourth act he trembled and reeled, and with the words, ‘I am dying; speak to them for me,’ fell into the arms of his son. He was taken to the Wrekin tavern, Broad Court, Bow Street, and then removed to Richmond. Kean summoned his wife, who forgave and returned to him, and on 15 May 1833 he died. On the 25th his remains were interred in Richmond churchyard. Macready, Harley, Dunn, Braham, Farren, and Cooper were pall-bearers. His mother, Anne Carey, whom he supported to the last, and to whose other children he even extended shelter, survived him eight days. An application for permission to bury him in Westminster Abbey near Garrick was refused, in consequence, it is said, of a financial difficulty. A tablet, with a medallion portrait erected by his son, remains an attractive feature in old Richmond Church.
In a dozen or so of tragic characters, at the head of which stand Richard III, Shylock, Othello, Hamlet, Lear, and Sir Giles Overreach, Kean has never probably been equalled. In no new piece did he create an enduringly favourable impression. For this, however, the conditions of dramatic authorship in his time may be held responsible. Marvellous passion, impetuosity, subtlety, and force distinguished his greatest impersonations. Coleridge's declaration is well known, that ‘to see Kean act is like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.’ Speaking of him in his decline Talfourd, after praising his Shylock, says: ‘His Sir Giles is not so terrible as it was when it sent Lord Byron into hysterics and made Mrs. Glover tremble, but it is sustained by a quiet consciousness of power and superiority to principle or fear, and the deficiency of physical force in the last scene is supplied with consummate skill’ (New Monthly Mag. 1831, pt. iii. p. 117). His Othello, ‘as once played,’ is said to have been ‘equal to anything perhaps ever presented on the stage.’ Hazlitt, who at the outset constituted himself the champion of Kean, declared, à propos of his Sir Giles Overreach, that Kean's acting is not ‘much relished in the upper circles. It is thought too obtrusive and undisguised a display of nature.’ ‘A View of the English Stage,’ 1818, p. 243, says of his Othello that ‘it is his best character, and the highest effort of genius on the stage’ (ib. p. 212). Lewes calls Kean ‘a consummate master of passionate expression;’ denies him ‘capacity for showing the intellectual side of heroism;’ and declares of his Shylock that ‘anything more impressive than the passionate recrimination and wild justice of argument in his “Hath not a Jew eyes?” has never been seen on our stage’ (On Actors and the Art of Acting, p. 11). Campbell declared that Kean with all his powers failed in the part of Lear as a whole. Though brought up in a different school, Fanny Kemble said, ‘Kean is gone, and with him are gone Othello, Shylock, and Richard.’ The testimony to Kean by his rivals is characteristically grudging, that especially of Macready, who flattered himself that Kean was jealous of him. ‘Jack’ Bannister, a generous man, but an adherent of the old school, said Kean had flashes of power equal to Garrick, but could not sustain a character throughout as Garrick did. Kemble, when asked if he had seen Kean as Othello, said, ‘I did not see Mr. Kean, but Othello.’
Kean was small in stature, and the idea of grace which he conveyed was a conquest over physical difficulties. He had a fine head, a piercing eye, and a musical and powerful voice. His temper in his later days was ungovernable, and his moods uncertain. With the exception of drunkenness and some habits of personal ostentation, he had few apparent extravagances. His generosity was lavish, but the manner in which he spent an income which equalled that of any three contemporary English actors, and is said for eighteen years to have averaged 10,000l. a year, is inexplicable. Shortly before his death he is said to have been in debt for a sum of less than 100l. Mrs. Kean long survived her husband, and died 30 March 1849, at Keydell, near Hornbeam, Hampshire.
Portraits of Kean are innumerable. In the Mathews collection in the Garrick Club are paintings by Clint, A.R.A., of Kean as Richard III; by De Wilde in the same character; by Harlowe as Macbeth, and as Hamlet by Geer; and a portrait of him in his robes as a Huron chief, under the name of Alanienouidet, by Meyer. A picture of Kean as Sir Giles Overreach, with other members of Drury Lane company, by Clint, whose masterpiece it probably is, was presented to the Garrick Club by (Sir) Henry Irving in 1890.
