J. B. BOOTH.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
EDMUND KEAN—CONTINUED.
Between the last-named period, and the time when Edmund Kean played Virginius, there is but one character in which he produced any extraordinary effect, namely King Lear. This sustained, but I do not think it increased, his glory. His other characters only seem to glide past, and disappear. Such are Richard, Duke of York, in a compilation from several of Shakspeare's plays; Barabas, in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," the heaviness of which he relieved by a song, sweetly warbled; Selim, in Dimond's melodramatic "Bride of Abydos;" Young Norval, in which he was graceful and affecting; King John, which did not disturb the repose of Kemble; and Alexander the Great, which could as little stir the dead sleep of Verbruggen. Something more effective was his Brutus, in Payne's compilation. The scene of his simulated folly was skilfully played; that with the son whom he condemns to death, full of tenderness and gravity. He could not sustain Miss Porter's "Switzerland," and he would not support Mr. Bucke's "Italians." Soane literally measured him for Malvesi, in the "Dwarf of Naples," and misfitted him grievously. Mr. Twiss had no better success with the "Carib Chief," in which Kean played Omreah; and my recollections of his Rolla are not so agreeable as those which I have of Young, and even Wallack. Well do I remember his Coriolanus, for which he was physically unfitted; but only a great actor could have played the scene of the candidateship, and that of the death, as Kean did—who, however, gave more pleasure to the followers of the Kemble school by this performance, than he did to his own. He made up for all, by the grandeur, the touchingness, and the sublimity of his King Lear. It was throughout thoroughly original in conception and in execution, and by it he maintained his pre-eminency, and sustained, as I have said, without increasing his old glory. He did not quite realise his own assertion: "I will make the audience as mad as I shall be."
His laurels were menaced. Frederick Yates came from the camp, and flashed a promise in tragedy which moved the hearts of playgoers, who saw his later devotion to comedy with early regret, but an ultimate delight. Mr. Macready was steadily rising from melodrama to the highest walks of tragedy, and his golden opportunity came in Virginius. Hitherto, Kean had been shaking the secondary actors of the old Kemble type into fits of jealousy, fear, disgust, and admiration. Expressly for him did Knowles write the "Virginius," which gave a lasting celebrity to Mr. Macready. Already, however, had a play on the subject, by Soane, been accepted at Drury Lane, and in the Roman father Kean was for the first time designedly opposed to the younger actor, He utterly failed; while Mr. Macready, in the part written expressly, and by an able hand, for Kean, won a noble victory. Kean might have said as the captured French Marshal said to Marlborough:—"Change sides with me, and I'll fight it out again, to a very different issue."
A range through his principal parts, and a running salute of thundering puffs on the part of Elliston, heralded his visit to America in 1820. He played at Liverpool before embarking, and like George Frederick Cooke, had a hit at the audience before he left them. They were the coldest people, he said, in whose presence he had ever acted. That was true: but though Liverpool was chary of approbation, it had applauded ungrateful Edmund more cordially than any other actor.
From his first trip to America he brought back much solid gold, a detestation of the Boston people, who would not patronise the theatre at an unfashionable season of the year, and one of the toe-bones of Cooke, over whose translated and mutilated remains he raised the monument of which I have already spoken.