without a word of apology or regret, to the care of the woman who had
befriended her in her trouble. When he was but three years old he was
brought, amongst a number of other children, to Michael Kelly who
was then bringing out the opera of _Cymon_ at the Opera House in the
Haymarket, and, thanks to his personal beauty, he was selected for
the part of Cupid. Shortly afterwards he found his way to Drury Lane,
where the handsome baby--for he was little more--figured among the
imps in the pantomime. Taught here the tricks of the acrobat, he had
at four years old acquired such powers of contortion that he was fit
to rank as an infant phenomenon. But the usual result followed: the
little limbs became deformed, and had to be put in irons, by means
of which they regained that symmetry with which nature had at first
endowed them. Three years afterwards, in March, 1794, John Kemble was
acting Macbeth at Drury Lane; and, in the "cauldron scene," he engaged
some children to personate the supernatural beings summoned by the
witches from that weird vessel. Little Edmund with his irons was the
cause of a ridiculous accident, and the attempt to embody the ghostly
forms was abruptly abandoned. But the child seems to have been
pardoned for his blunder, and for a short time was permitted by the
manager to appear in one or two children's parts. Little did the
dignified manager imagine that the child--who was one of his
cauldron of imps in _Macbeth_--was to become, twenty years later, his
formidable rival--formidable enough to oust almost the representative
of the Classical school from the supremacy he had hitherto enjoyed on
the Tragic stage. In Orange Court, Leicester Square, where Holcroft,
the author of _The Road to Ruin_, was born, Edmund Kean received
his first education. Scanty enough it was, for it had scarcely begun
before his wretched mother stepped in and claimed him; and, after her
re-appearance, his education seems to have been of a most spasmodic
character. Hitherto, the child's experience of life had been hard
enough. When only eight years of age he ran away to Portsmouth, and
shipped himself on board a ship bound to Madeira. But he found his
new life harder than that from which he had escaped, and, by dint of
feigning deafness and lameness, he succeeded in procuring his removal
to an hospital at Madeira, whence, the doctors finding his case
yielded to no remedies, the authorities kindly shipped him again to
England. He insisted on being deaf and lame: indeed, so deaf that in
a violent thunder-storm he remained perfectly unmoved, explaining his
composure by declaring that he could not hear any noise at all. From
Portsmouth he made his way on foot to London. On presenting himself
at the wretched lodgings where his mother lived, he found that she had
gone away with Richardson's troupe. Penniless and half-starving, he
suddenly thought of his uncle, Moses Kean, who lived in Lisle Street,
Leicester Square, a queer character, who gained a precarious living by
giving entertainments as a mimic and ventriloquist. The uncle received
his nephew warmly enough, and seems to have cultivated, to the best of
his ability, the talent for acting which he recognized at once in
the boy. Edmund again enjoyed a kind of desultory education, partly
carried on at school and partly at his uncle's home, where he enjoyed
the advantage of the kind instructions of his old friend, Miss
Tidswell, of D'Egville, the dancing master, of Angelo, the fencing
master, and of no less a person than Incledon, the celebrated singer,
who seems to have taken the greatest interest in him. But the vagrant,
half-gypsy disposition, which he inherited from his mother, could
never be subdued, and he was constantly disappearing from his uncle's
house for weeks together, which he would pass in going about from one
roadside inn to another, amusing the guests with his acrobatic tricks,
and his monkey-like imitations. In vain was he locked up in rooms, the
height of which from the ground was such as seemed to render escape
impossible. He contrived to get out somehow or other, even at the risk
of his neck, and to make his escape to some fair, where he would earn
a few pence by the exhibition of his varied accomplishments. During
these periods of vagabondism he would live on a mere nothing, sleeping
in barns, or in the open air, and would faithfully bring back his
gains to Uncle Moses. But even this astounding generosity, appealing,
as it must have done, to the uncle's sentiments, could not appease
him. His uncle went so far, apparently with the concurrence of Miss
Tidswell, as to place round the boy's neck a brass collar with the
inscription, "This boy belongs to No. 9 Lisle Street; please bring him
home." His wandering propensities being for a time subdued, we find
the little Edmund again engaged at Drury Lane, and delighting the
actors in the green-room by giving recitations from _Richard III._,
probably in imitation of Cooke; and, on one occasion, among his
audience was Mrs. Charles Kemble. During this engagement he played
Arthur to Kemble's King John and Mrs. Siddon's Constance, and appears
to have made a great success. Soon after this, his uncle Moses
died suddenly, and young Kean was left to the severe but kindly
guardianship of Miss Tidswell. We cannot follow him through all the
vicissitudes of his early career. The sketch I have given of his early
life--ample details of which may be found in Mrs. Hawkins's _Life of
Edmund Kean_--will give you a sufficient idea of what he must have
endured and suffered. When, years afterwards, the passionate love of
Shakespeare, which, without exaggeration, we may say he showed almost
from his cradle, had reaped its own reward in the wonderful success
which he achieved, if we find him then averse to respectable
conventionality, erratic, and even dissipated in his habits, let us
mercifully remember the bitter and degrading suffering which he passed
through in his childhood, and not judge too harshly the great actor.
Unlike those whose lives we have hitherto considered, he knew none of
the softening influences of a home; to him the very name of mother,
instead of recalling every tender and affectionate feeling, was but
the symbol of a vague horror, the fountain of that degradation and
depravation of his nature, from which no subsequent prosperity could
ever redeem it.
For many years after his boyhood his life was one of continual
hardship. With that unsubdued conviction of his own powers, which
often is the sole consolation of genius, he toiled on and bravely
struggled through the sordid miseries of a strolling player's life.
The road to success lies through many a thorny course, across many a
dreary stretch of desert land, over many an obstacle, from which the
fainting heart is often tempted to turn back. But hope, and the sense
of power within, which no discouragements can subdue, inspire the
struggling artist still to continue the conflict, till at last courage
and perseverance meet with their just reward, and success comes. The
only feeling then to which the triumphant artist may be tempted is one
of good-natured contempt for those who are so ready to applaud those
merits which, in the past, they were too blind to recognize. Edmund
Kean was twenty-seven years old before his day of triumph came.
Without any preliminary puffs, without any flourish of trumpets, on
the evening of the 26th January, 1814, soaked through with the rain,
Edmund Kean slunk more than walked in at the stage-door of Drury Lane
Theatre, uncheered by one word of encouragement, and quite unnoticed.
He found his way to the wretched dressing-room he shared in common
with three or four other actors; as quick as possible he exchanged his
dripping clothes for the dress of Shylock; and, to the horror of
his companions, took from his bundle a _black_ wig--the proof of his
daring rebellion against the great law of conventionality, which
had always condemned Shylock to red hair. Cheered by the kindness of
Bannister and Oxberry, the latter of whom offered him a welcome glass
of brandy and water, he descended to the stage dressed, and peeped
through the curtain to see a more than half-empty house. Dr. Drury
was waiting at the wings to give him a hearty welcome. The boxes were
empty, and there were about five hundred people in the pit, and a few
others "thinly scattered to make up a show." Shylock was the part he
was playing, and he no sooner stepped upon the stage than the interest
of the audience was excited. Nothing he did or spoke in the part was
done or spoken in a conventional manner. The simple words, "I will be
assured I may," were given with such effect that the audience burst
into applause. When the act-drop fell, after the speech of Shylock
to Antonio, his success was assured, and his fellow-actors, who had
avoided him, now seemed disposed to congratulate him; but he shrank
from their approaches. The great scene with Tubal was a revelation of
such originality and of such terrible force as had not probably been
seen upon those boards before. "How the devil so few of them could
kick up such a row was something marvellous!" naïvely remarked
Oxberry. At the end of the third act every one was ready to pay court
to him; but again he held aloof. All his thoughts were concentrated on
the great "trial" scene, which was coming. In that scene the
wonderful variety of his acting completed his triumph. Trembling with
excitement, he resumed his half-dried clothes, and, glad to escape,
rushed home. He was in too great a state of ecstasy at first to speak,
but his face told his wife that he had realized his dream--that he
had appeared on the stage of Drury Lane, and that his great powers
had been instantly acknowledged. With not a shadow of doubt as to his
future, he exclaimed, "Mary, you shall ride in your carriage;" and
taking his baby boy from the cradle and kissing him, said, "and
Charley, my boy, you shall go to Eton,"--and he did.
The time when Edmund Kean made his first appearance in London was
certainly favorable for an actor of genius. For a long while the
national theatre had been in a bad way; and nothing but failure had
hitherto met the efforts of the Committee of Management, a committee
which numbered among its members Lord Byron. When the other members
of the committee, with a strange blindness to their own interests,
proposed that for the present, Kean's name should be removed from
the bills, Byron interested himself on his behalf: "You have a great
genius among you," he said, "and you do not know it." On Kean's second
appearance the house was nearly doubled. Hazlitt's criticism had
roused the whole body of critics, and they were all there to sit in
judgment upon the newcomer. His utter indifference to the audience won
him their respect, and before the piece was half over the sentence
of the formidable tribunal was in his favor. From that moment Kean
exercised over his audiences a fascination which was probably never
exercised by any other actor. Garrick was no doubt his superior in
parts of high comedy; he was more polished, more vivacious--his manner
more distinguished, and his versatility more striking. In such parts
as Coriolanus or Rolla, John Kemble excelled him: but in Shylock,
in Richard, in Iago, and, above all, in Othello, it may be doubted
whether Edmund Kean ever had an equal. As far as one can judge--not
having seen Kean one's-self--from the many criticisms extant, written
by the most intellectual men, and from the accounts of those who
saw him in his prime, he was, to my mind--be it said without any
disparagement to other great actors--the greatest genius that our
stage has ever seen. Unequal he may have been, perhaps often so, but
there were moments in his acting which were, without exaggeration,
moments of inspiration. Coleridge is reported to have said that to see
Kean act was "like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." This
often-quoted sentence embodies perhaps the main feature of Edmund
Kean's greatness as an actor; for, when he was impersonating the
heroes of our poet, he revealed their natures by an instant flash of
light so searching that every minute feature, which by the ordinary
light of day was hardly visible, stood bright and clear before you.
The effect of such acting was indeed that of lightning--it appalled;
the timid hid their eyes, and fashionable society shrank from such
heart-piercing revelations of human passion. Persons who had schooled
themselves to control their emotion till they had scarcely any
emotion left to control, were repelled rather than attracted by Kean's
relentless anatomy of all the strongest feeling of our nature. In Sir
Giles Overreach, a character almost devoid of poetry, Kean's acting
displayed with such powerful and relentless truth the depths of a
cruel, avaricious man, baffled in all his vilest schemes, that the
effect he produced was absolutely awful. As no bird but the eagle can
look without blinking on the sun, so none but those who in the
sacred privacy of their imaginations had stood face to face with the
mightiest storms of human passion could understand such a performance.
Byron, who had been almost forced into a quarrel with Kean by the
actor's disregard of the ordinary courtesies of society, could not
restrain himself, but rushed behind the scenes and grasped the hand of
the man to whom he felt that he owed a wonderful revelation.
I might discant for hours with an enthusiasm which, perhaps, only an
actor could feel on the marvellous details of Kean's impersonations.
He was not a scholar in the ordinary sense of the word, though Heaven
knows he had been schooled by adversity, but I doubt if there ever was
an actor who so thought out his part, who so closely studied with the
inward eye of the artist the waves of emotion that might have agitated
the minds of the beings whom he represented. One hears of him during
those early years of struggle and privation, pacing silently along
the road, foot-sore and half-starved, but unconscious of his own
sufferings, because he was immersed in the study of those great
creations of Shakespeare's genius which he was destined to endow with
life upon the stage. When you read of Edmund Kean as, alas! he was
later on in life, with mental and physical powers impaired, think of
the description those gave of him who knew him best in his earlier
years; how amidst all the wildness and half-savage Bohemianism, which
the miseries of his life had ensured, he displayed, time after time,
the most large-hearted generosity, the tenderest kindness of which
human nature is capable. Think of him working with a concentrated
energy for the one object which he sought, namely, to reach the
highest distinction in his calling. Think of him as sparing no mental
or physical labor to attain this end, an end which seemed ever fading
further and further from his grasp. Think of the disappointments, the
cruel mockeries of hope which, day after day, he had to encounter;
and then be harsh if you can to those moral failings for which his
misfortunes rather than his faults were responsible. If you are
inclined to be severe, you may console yourselves with the reflection
that this genius, who had given the highest intellectual pleasure to
hundreds and thousands of human beings, was hounded by hypocritical
sanctimoniousness out of his native land; and though, two years
afterwards, one is glad to say, for the honor of one's country, a
complete reaction took place, and his reappearance was greeted with
every mark of hearty welcome, the blow had been struck from which
neither his mind or his body ever recovered. He lingered upon
the stage, and died at the age of forty-six, after five years of
suffering--almost a beggar--with only a solitary ten-pound note
remaining of the large fortune his genius had realized.
It is said that Kean swept away the Kembles and their Classical school
of acting. He did not do that. The memory of Sarah Siddons, tragic
queen of the British stage, was never to be effaced, and I would
remind you that when Kean was a country actor (assured of his own
powers, however unappreciated), resenting with passionate pride the
idea of playing second to "the Infant Roscius," who was for a time
the craze and idol of the hour, "Never," said he, "never; I will play
second to no one but John Kemble!" I am certain that when his
better nature had the ascendency no one would have more generously
acknowledged the merits of Kemble than Edmund Kean. It is idle to say
that because his style was solemn and slow, Kemble was not one of the
greatest actors that our stage has produced. It is only those whose
natures make them incapable of approbation or condemnation in artistic
matters without being partisans, who, because they admire Edmund Kean,
would admit no merit in John Kemble. The world of art, thank Heaven,
is wide enough for both, and the hearts of those who truly love art
are large enough to cherish the memory of both as of men who did noble
work in the profession which they adorned. Kean blended the Realistic
with the Ideal in acting, and founded a school of which William
Charles Macready was, afterwards, in England, the foremost disciple.
Thus have we glanced, briefly enough, at four of our greatest actors
whose names are landmarks in the history of the Drama in England, the
greatest Drama of the world. We have seen how they all carried out, by
different methods perhaps, but in the same spirit, the principle that
in acting Nature must dominate Art. But it is Art that must interpret
Nature; and to interpret the thoughts and emotions of her mistress
should be her first object. But those thoughts, those emotions, must
be interpreted with grace, with dignity and with temperance; and
these, let us remember, Art alone can teach.
ADDRESS
SESSIONAL OPENING
PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION
EDINBURGH
9 NOVEMBER 1891
THE ART OF ACTING
I have chosen as the subject of the address with which I have the
honor to inaugurate for the second time the Session of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Institution, "The Art of Acting." I have done so, in the
first instance, because I take it for granted that when you bestow on
any man the honor of asking him to deliver the inaugural address, it
is your wish to hear him speak of the subject with which he is best
acquainted; and the Art of Acting is the subject to which my life has
been devoted. I have another reason also which, though it may, so far
as you are concerned, be personal to those of my calling, I think it
well to put before you. It is that there may be, from the point of
view of an actor distinguished by your favor, some sort of official
utterance on the subject. There are some irresponsible writers who
have of late tried to excite controversy by assertions, generally
false and always misleading, as to the stage and those devoted to the
arts connected with it. Some of these writers go so far as to assert
that Acting is not an Art at all; and though we must not take such
wild assertions quite seriously, I think it well to place on record at
least a polite denial of their accuracy. It would not, of course,
be seemly to merely take so grave an occasion as the present as an
opportunity for such a controversy, but as I am dealing with the
subject before you, I think it better to place you in full knowledge
of the circumstances. It does not do, of course, to pay too much
attention to ephemeral writings, any more than to creatures of the
mist and the swamp and the night. But even the buzzing of the midge,
though the insect may be harmless compared with its more poison-laden
fellows, can divert the mind from more important things. To disregard
entirely the world of ephemera, and their several actions and effects
were to deny the entirety of the scheme of creation.
I take it for granted that in addressing you on the subject of the Art
of Acting I am not, _prima facie_, encountering set prejudices; for
had you despised the Art which I represent I should not have had the
honor of appearing before you to-day. You will, I trust, on your part,
bear this in mind, and I shall, on my part, never forget that you are
members of a Philosophical Institution, the very root and basis of
whose work is to inquire into the heart of things with the purpose of
discovering why such as come under your notice are thus or thus.
The subject of my address is a very vast one, and is, I assure you,
worthy of a careful study. Writers such as Voltaire, Schlegel, Goethe,
Lessing, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt, and Schiller, have not disdained to
treat it with that seriousness which Art specially demands--which
anything in life requires whose purpose is not immediate and
imperative. For my own part I can only bring you the experience
of more than thirty years of hard and earnest work. Out of wide
experience let me point out that there are many degrees of merit, both
of aim, of endeavor, and of execution in acting, as in all things. I
want you to think of acting at its best--as it may be, as it can be,
as it has been, and is--and as it shall be, whilst it be followed by
men and women of strong and earnest purpose. I do not for a moment
wish you to believe that only Shakespeare and the great writers are
worthy of being played, and that all those efforts that in centuries
have gathered themselves round great names are worthy of your praise.
In the House of Art are many mansions where men may strive worthily
and live cleanly lives. All Art is worthy, and can be seriously
considered, so long as the intention be good and the efforts to
achieve success be conducted with seemliness. And let me here say,
that of all the arts none requires greater intention than the art
of acting. Throughout it is necessary to _do_ something, and
that something cannot fittingly be left to chance, or the unknown
inspiration of a moment. I say "unknown," for if known, then the
intention is to reproduce, and the success of the effort can be
in nowise due to chance. It may be, of course, that in moments of
passionate excitement the mind grasps some new idea, or the nervous
tension suggests to the mechanical parts of the body some new form of
expression; but such are accidents which belong to the great scheme of
life, and not to this art, or any art, alone. You all know the story
of the painter who, in despair at not being able to carry out the
intention of his imagination, dashed his brush at the imperfect
canvas, and with the scattering paint produced by chance the very
effect which his brush guided by his skill alone, had failed to
achieve. The actor's business is primarily to reproduce the ideas of
the author's brain, to give them form, and substance, and color, and
life, so that those who behold the action of a play may, so far as
can be effected, be lured into the fleeting belief that they behold
reality. Macready, who was an earnest student, defined the art of the
actor "to fathom the depths of character, to trace its latent motives,
to feel its finest quivering of emotion, is to comprehend the thoughts
that are hidden under words, and thus possess one's-self of the actual
mind of the individual man"; and Talma spoke of it as "the union
of grandeur without pomp, and nature without triviality"; whilst
Shakespeare wrote, "the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to
nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the
very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
This effort to reproduce man in his moods is no mere trick of fancy
carried into execution. It is a part of the character of a strong
nation, and has a wider bearing on national life than perhaps
unthinking people are aware. Mr. Froude, in his survey of early
England, gives it a special place; and I venture to quote his words,
for they carry with them, not only their own lesson, but the authority
of a great name in historical research.
"No genius can dispense with experience; the aberrations of power,
unguided or ill-guided, are ever in proportion to its intensity, and
life is not long enough to recover from inevitable mistakes. Noble
conceptions already existing, and a noble school of execution which
will launch mind and hand at once upon their true courses, are
indispensable to transcendent excellence; and Shakespeare's plays were
as much the offspring of the long generations who had pioneered his
road for him, as the discoveries of Newton were the offspring of those
of Copernicus.
"No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great
statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artist out
of a nation of materialists; no great drama, except when the drama was
the possession of the people. Acting was the especial amusement of the
English, from the palace to the village green. It was the result and
expression of their strong, tranquil possession of their lives, of
their thorough power over themselves, and power over circumstances.
They were troubled with no subjective speculations; no social problems
vexed them with which they were unable to deal; and in the exuberance
of vigor and spirit, they were able, in the strict and literal sense
of the word, to play with the materials of life." So says Mr. Froude.