The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-10
HEImmmI KenH.

It NAV be SAID Jlat, on Ule one ulnQ, JnerG
was nothing in Kean's birth or training to
prepare us for the development Of his sur
prising powers. But, on the other hand, he
did not rely on these powers alone, and his
success was as much owing to the most prin-
full and assiduous study as to his native genius.
His wife described him as ''moping about for
hours, walking miles and miles alone with his
hands in his pockets, thinking intensely on
his characters No one could get a word from
him He studied and shaved beyond any actor
b l ever knew" Before acting the part of ''King
Lear" it is said that he went through scene
after scene before the pier-glass from mid
night to MONDAY. For the same part he studied
the effects of madness in constant visits to
ST. Lul1es and Bethlehem Hospital, and he
was always on the watch for touches of ma
ture, which he afterwards reproduced with
great effect. Towards the end of his life,
being with some friends at the Castle Inn,
Richmond, he was asked when he studied.
81 am studying now" he replied, pointing to
a man on the other side of the room who was
far gone in liquor, but was trying to look as
if he was sober. Il wish some of my Cas-
sios' were here. They might see that instead
of rolling about in the ridiculous way they do,
the great secret of delineating intoxication is
the endeavor to stand straight when it is inn
possible to do So" One of Keans finest
effects as ''Sr Giles Overreach" was taken
on farmers land with companion, and the
farmer, learning they were players, threatened
them with the stocks keans companion
challenged the farmer to fight, fought,
and was worsted, on which, lin
paroxysm of defeated wrath which convulsed
his whole frame and seemed all but to sutfo-
cate him, he dragged open his shirt-collar and
tore it to ribbons This incident was not lost
upon Kean, who subsequently reproduced it
I'm he Of 4 tn
Debts, when he appeared as 'Overeach in
London; and no one who saw him in that
character can ever forget the appalling sensa-
tions produced by his manner, as with face
ivid, eyes distended, lips swollen and parted
at the corners, teeth set, and yisage quiver-
ing, he dragged open his shirt-collar and tore
it to ribbons" Such incessant observation
and study must have done far more to fit
Kean for his triumphant career than the Eton
education which he is said to have received
but about which many of his biographers are
skeptical
He was the natural son of a man who is al
ternately described as a tailor, an architect,
and stage carpenter, and of woman who
was sometimes a strolling player and some
times a hawller. The father had abandoned
the mother before the child's birth, and three
months after his birth the child was deserted
in his turn. He was picked up i'll the streets
by poor couple and was taken care of by
them till his mother reclaimed him in order
to train him for the stage. When three years
old he figured as Cupid in a ballet at the
Opera; he was afterwards a demon in the
Drury Lane pantomime, and when Kemble
brought out 4NaC6eM at the same theatre,
Kean, then aged six, appeared as one of the
goblin troupe in the scene of the witches
cauldron. On this occasion he played the
manager and the rest of the COLLINS a trick
which 'led to the abandonment of what Kem-
BILE is reported to have termed the finest COM
mentary ON and illustration of Shakespeare
ever attempted on the stage"
Kean, being hampered by some irons which
had been applied to his limbs as a cure for
distortion, made a false step, tripped up his
neighbor, and sent the whole troupe sprawling.
One of the next events in Kean's boyhood is
his trial of a sea life. He ran away from
home, walked to Portsmouth, and shipped
himself as cabin-boy on a vessel bound to
Madeira. Of course he was not long in dis
covering that he had made change for the
worse. To procure his freedom, he affected
complete deafness and lameness, keeping up
the deception so well that he was sent to
hospital in Madeira, and thence back to Eng
land. We afterwards hear of sundry other
pranks, of continual escapes from the uncle
with whom he was staying, of his turning
head-over-heels and giving limitations of mon
keys and knife-grinders at taverns, and of his
beng once found tarred and feathered at a
public-house where he was tumbling and sing
ing for halfpence. If this was not a worthy
preparation for an Etonian, it was still less in
character with the dignity of the future ira
gedian.
The beginning of Kean's dramatic career,
when people wondered who was that little
man in the capes, waiting in the hall at
Drury Lane, or when Mrs. Siddons, playing
with him at the Belfast Theatre, asked, "Who
is that horTid little MANI" scarcely lead up to
the sudden success he gained on his appear
ance as ''Shylock" But from that time forward
he rose from glory to glory. In almost every
part he played he worked revolution. The
conservatives of the drama objected to his
black wig in the part of 'Shylocl1," to the
''quickness of familiar utterance' with which,
as Richard III, he pronounced sentence on
Hastings, to the eight, gay and careless air.
substituted for gloom and grimness in the
representation of "Iago." But the public was
with Kean in all these points, and, right
or wrong, they were applauded to the
echo. We have already heard of his recep-
ton as ''Sir Giles Overreach. When he
first acted ''Shylock' to thin house, the
actors in the green-roOm wondered how such
a noise could be made by so few people.
The nightly receipts of the theatre rose so
rapidly that the committee of management
doubled Keans salary, and gifts, praises tri-
butes flowed in TO him from all quarters.
Among his finest hits must be ranked the atti-
tude he assumed in Orchard III, 4" when the
action of the play was suspended in order that
he might stand for while drawing figures
on the sand and gazing into vacancy. OF his
performance of "Luke" in Massinger's City
Madam" it is recorded that an old lady, who