 | Poems and prose writings |  |
KEAN'S ACTING
“For doubtless, that indeed according to art is most eloquent, which turns
and approaches nearest to nature, from whence it came.”
Milton.
* * * * * * * * *
We ransack tombs for postime; from the dust
Call up the sleeping hero; bid him tread
The scene for our amusement: How like Gods
We sit; and, wrapt in immortality,
Shed generous tears on wretches born to die;
Their fate deploring, to forget our own!”
Young.
In looking over, for the present edition, the following
article, published when Kean was in this country, the
lines which I have quoted from Young were brought
forcibly to my mind. There was something painful
to me in my own words, which speak of him as living
and acting, for the curtain is, indeed, dropped now;
and many, who heard and saw him then, have gone to
their graves, too. It is startling to have our thoughts
follow into eternity, a man of genius and fiery passions;
for there needs must be an intensity of Life
there, which will make this world's existence seem to
us, as we look back upon it, little more than a dream
of life — a beginning to be.
What a sad reflection upon our nature it is, that an
play is, and capable of being made to administer so
much to our moral state, should be so tainted with impurity
— that the theatre should be a place where congregate
the most licentious appetites and passions, and
from which is breathed out so foul an atmosphere.
Such as it is, I am now done with it. I would sooner
forego the intellectual pleasure I might receive from
another Kean, (were there ever to be another Kean,)
than by yielding to it, give countenance to vice, by
going where infecting and open corruption sits, side
by side, with the seemly.
It is not to read a lecture to others, but that I
might not appear to approve of what I disapprove,
that I have written these few lines; preferring to do
so, to introducing any essential change into the main
article, for the sake of adapting it to my present views.
I Had scarcely thought of the theatre for several
years, when Kean arrived in this country; and it
was more from curiosity than from any other motive,
that I went to see, for the first time, the great
actor of the age. I was soon lost to the recollection
of being in a theatre, or looking upon a grand display
of the “mimic art.” The simplicity, earnestness,
and sincerity of his acting made me forgetful of the
fiction, and bore me away with the power of reality
and truth. If this be acting, said I, as I returned
home, I may as well make the theatre my school, and
henceforward study nature at second hand.
How can I describe one who is nearly as versatile
and almost as full of beauties as nature itself — who
grows upon us the more we are acquainted with him,
any part, however much he may have moved us, we
had but a vague and poor apprehension of the many
excellencies of his acting. We cease to consider it
as a mere amusement: It is a great intellectual feast;
and he who goes to it with a disposition and capacity
to relish it, will receive from it more nourishment for
his mind, than he would be likely to in many other
ways in four-fold the time. Our faculties are opened
and enlivened by it; our reflections and recollections
are of an elevated kind; and the very voice which is
sounding in our ears long after we have left him,
creates an inward harmony which is for our good.
Kean, in truth, stands very much in that relation
to other players whom we have seen, that Shakspeare
does to other dramatists. One player is called classical;
another makes fine points here, and another
there. Kean makes more fine points than all of them
together; but, in him, these are only little prominences,
showing their bright heads above a beautifully
undulated surface. A constant change is going on in
him, partaking of the nature of the varying scenes he
is passing through, and the many thoughts and feelings
which are shifting within him.
In a clear autumnal day we may see, here and there,
a deep white cloud shining with metallic brightness
against a blue sky, and now and then a dark pine
swinging its top in the wind, with the melancholy
sound of the sea; but who can note the shifting and
untiring play of the leaves of the wood, and their
passing hues, when each one seems a living thing
full of delight, and vain of its gaudy attire? A sound,
too, of universal harmony is in our ears, and a widespread
beauty before our eyes, which we cannot define;
in these, day after day, the longer we give ourselves
to them, till at last we become, as it were, a part of
the existence without us. So it is with natural characters.
They grow upon us imperceptibly, till we
become fast bound up in them, we scarce know when
or how. So it will fare with the actor who is deeply
filled with nature, and is perpetually throwing off her
beautiful evanescences. Instead of becoming tired of
him, as we do, after a time, of others, he will go on,
giving something which will be new to the observing
mind; and will keep the feelings alive, because their
action will be natural. I have no doubt that, excepting
those who go to a play as children look into a
show-box, to admire and exclaim at distorted figures,
and raw, unharmonious colours, there is no man of a
moderately warm temperament, and with a tolerable
share of insight into human nature, who would not find
his interest in Kean increasing with a study of him. It
is very possible that the excitement would in some degree
lessen, but there would be a quieter delight, instead
of it, stealing upon him, as he became familiar
with the character of his acting.
The versatility in his playing is striking. He
seems not the same being, taking upon him at one
time the character of Richard, at another that of
Hamlet; but the two characters appear before you as
distinct individuals, who had never known nor heard
of each other. So completely does he become the
character he is to represent, that we have sometimes
thought it a reason why he was not universally better
liked here, in Richard; and that because the player
did not make himself a little more visible, he must
needs bear a share of our hate toward the cruel king.
of the character, whether right or wrong, creates
in us an unmixed dislike of Richard, till the anguish
of his mind makes him the object of pity; from which
moment to the close, Kean is allowed to play the part
better than any one has before him.
In his highest wrought passion, when every limb
and muscle are alive and quivering, and his gestures
hurried and violent, nothing appears ranted or overacted;
because he makes us feel, that with all this,
there is something still within him vainly struggling
for utterance. The very breaking and harshness of
his voice in these parts, though upon the whole it
were better otherwise, help to this impression upon
us, and make up in a good degree for the defect.
Though he is on the very verge of truth in his passionate
parts, he does not pass into extravagance; but
runs along the dizzy edge of the roaring and beating
sea, with feet as sure as we walk our parlours. We
feel that he is safe, for some preternatural spirit upholds
him as it hurries him onward; and while all is
uptorn and tossing in the whirl of the passions, we
see that there is a power and order over the whole.
A man has feelings sometimes which can only be
breathed out; there is no utterance for them in words.
I had hardly written this when the terrible and indistinct,
“Ha!” with which Kean makes Lear hail
Cornwall and Regan, as they enter, in the fourth
scene of the second act, came to my mind. That cry
seemed at the time to take me up, and sweep me
along in its wild swell. No description in the world
could give a tolerably clear notion of it; it must be
formed, as well as it may be, from what has just been
said of its effect.
Kean's playing is frequently giving instances of
various, inarticulate sounds — the throttled struggle
of rage, and the choking of grief — the broken laugh
of extreme suffering, when the mind is ready to deliver
itself over to an insane joy — the utterance of
over-full love, which cannot, and would not speak in
express words — and that of wildering grief, which
blanks all the faculties of man.
No other player whom I have heard has attempted
these, except now and then; and should any one
have made the trial in the various ways in which
Kean gives them, no doubt he would have failed.
Kean thrills us with them, as if they were wrung from
him in his agony. They have no appearance of study
or artifice. The truth is, that the labour of a mind of
his genius constitutes its existence and delight. It
is not like the toil of ordinary men at their task-work.
What shows effort in them, comes from him with the
freedom and force of nature.
Some object to the frequent use of such sounds;
and to others they are quite shocking. But those who
permit themselves to consider that there are really
violent passions in man's nature, and that they utter
themselves a little differently from our ordinary feelings,
understand and feel their language, as they
speak to us in Kean. Probably no actor ever conceived
passion with the intenseness and life that he
does. It seems to enter into him and possess him, as
evil spirits possessed men of old. It is curious to observe
how some, who have sat very contentedly year
after year, and called the face-making which they
have seen, expression, and the stage-stride, dignity,
and the noisy declamation, and all the rhodomontade
of acting, energy and passion, complain that Kean is
little more than a simple personation of the feeling or
passion to be expressed at the time.
It has been so common a saying, that Lear is the
most difficult of all characters to personate, that we
had taken it for granted no man could play it so as to
satisfy us. Perhaps it is the hardest to represent.
Yet the part which has generally been supposed the
the most difficult, the insanity of Lear, is scarcely
more so than the choleric old king. Inefficient rage
is almost always ridiculous; and an old man, with a
broken down body and a mind falling in pieces from
the violence of its uncontrolled passions, is in constant
danger of exciting, along with our pity, a feeling of
contempt. It is a chance matter to which we are
moved. And this it is which makes the opening of
Lear so difficult.
We may as well notice here the objection which
some make to the abrupt violence with which Kean
begins in Lear. If this is a fault, it is Shakspeare,
and not Kean, who is to blame. For we have no
doubt that he has conceived it according to his author.
Perhaps, however, the mistake lies in this case, where
it does in most others — with those who put themselves
into the seat of judgment to pass upon greater men.
In most instances, Shakspeare has given us the
gradual growth of a passion, with such little accompaniments
as agree with it, and go to make up the
whole man. In Lear, his object being to represent
the beginning and course of insanity, he has properly
enough gone but a little back of it, and introduced to
us an old man of good feelings, but one who had lived
without any true principle of conduct, and whose
ungoverned passions had grown strong with age, and
of an intellect always weak. To bring this
about, he begins with an abruptness rather unusual;
and the old king rushes in before us, with all his
passions at their height, and tearing him like fiends.
Kean gives this as soon as a fit occasion offers itself.
Had he put more of melancholy and depression,
and less of rage into the character, we should have
been very much puzzled at his so suddenly going
mad. It would have required the change to have
been slower; and besides, his insanity must have been
of another kind. It must have been monotonous and
complaining, instead of continually varying; at one
time full of grief, at another playful, and then wild as
the winds that roared about him, and fiery and sharp
as the lightning that shot by him. The truth with
which he conceived this, was not finer than his execution
of it. Not for an instant, in his utmost violence,
did he suffer the imbecility of the old man's anger to
touch upon the ludicrous; when nothing but the most
just conception and feeling of character could have
saved him from it.
It has been said that Lear was a study for any one
who would make himself acquainted with the workings
of an insane mind. There is no doubt of it. Nor is
it less true, that the acting of Kean was a complete
embodying of the these working. His eye, when his
senses are first forsaking him, giving a questioning
look at what he saw, as if all before him was undergoing
a strange and bewildering change which confused
his brain — the wandering, lost motions of his
hands, which seemed feeling for something familiar to
them, on which they might take hold and be assured
of a safe reality — the under monotone of his voice,
surrounded him — the continuous, but slight oscillating
motion of the body — all these expressed, with
fearful truth, the dreamy state of a mind fast unsettling,
and making vain and weak efforts to find its
way back to its wonted reason. There was a childish,
feeble gladness in the eye, and a half piteous smile
about the mouth at times, which one could scarce
look upon without shedding tears. As the derangement
increased upon him, his eye lost its notice of
what surrounded him, wandering over everything as
if he saw it not, and fastening upon the creatures of
his crazed brain. The helpless and delighted fondness
with which he clings to Edgar as an insane
brother, is another instance of the justness of Kean's
conceptions. Nor does he lose the air of insanity,
even in the fine moralizing parts, and where he inveighs
against the corruptions of the world: There is
a madness even in his reason.
The violent and immediate changes of the passions
in Lear, so difficult to manage without offending us,
are given by Kean with a spirit and with a fitness to
nature which we had hardly imagined possible. These
are equally well done both before and after he loses
his reason. The most difficult scene, in this respect,
is the last interview between Lear and his daughters,
Goneril and Regan — (and how wonderfully does
Kean carry it through!) — the scene which ends with
the horrid shout and cry with which he runs out mad
from their presence, as if his very brain had taken
fire.
The last scene which we are allowed to have of
Shakspeare's Lear, for the simply pathetic, was played
by Kean with unmatched power. We sink down
dead weight upon our bosoms. We are denied even
the relief of tears; and are thankful for the startling
shudder that seizes us when he kneels to his daughter
in the deploring weakness of his crazed grief.
It is lamentable that Kean should not be allowed
to show his unequalled powers in the last scene of
Lear, as Shakspeare has written it; and that this
mighty work of genius should be profaned by the
miserable, mawkish sort of by-play of Edgar's and
Cordelia's loves: Nothing can surpass the impertinence
of the man who made the change, but the
folly of those who sanctioned it.
When I began, I had no other intention than that
of giving a few general impressions made upon me
by Kean's acting; but, falling accidentally upon his
Lear, I have been led into more particulars than I
was aware of. It is only to take these as some of the
instances of his powers in Lear, and then to think of
him as not inferior in his other characters, and a
slight notion may be formed of the effect of Kean's
playing upon those who understand and like him.
Neither this, nor all I could say, would reach his
great and various powers.
Kean is never behind his author; but stands forward
the living representative of the character he has
drawn. When he is not playing in Shakspeare, he
fills up, where his author is wanting, and when in
Shakspeare, he gives not only what is set down, but
whatever the situation and circumstances attendant
upon the being he personates, would naturally call
forth. He seems, at the time, to have possessed himself
of Shakspeare's imagination, and to have given it
for instance, the last of Lear that is played, and see
how few words are there set down, and then remember
how Kean fills it out with varied and multiplied
expressions and circumstances, and the truth of this
remark will be obvious at once. There are few men,
I believe, let them have studied the plays of Shakspeare
ever so attentively, who can see Kean in them
without confessing that he has helped them almost as
much to a true conception of the author, as their own
labours had done for them.
It is not easy to say in what character Kean plays
best. He so fits himself to each in turn, that if the
effect he produces at one time, is less than at another,
it is because of some inferiority in stage-effect in the
character. Othello is probably the greatest character
for stage-effect; and Kean has an uninterrupted power
over us, in playing it. When he commands, we are
awed; when his face is all sensitive with love, and
love thrills in his soft tones, all that our imaginations
had pictured to us is realized. His jealousy, his hate,
his fixed purposes, are terrific and deadly; and the
groans wrung from him in his grief, have the pathos
and anguish of Esau's, when he stood before his old,
blind father, and sent up “an exceeding bitter cry.”
Again, in Richard, how does he hurry forward to
his object, sweeping away all between him and it!
The world and its affairs are nothing to him, till he
gains his end. He is all life, and action, and haste —
he fills every part of the stage, and seems to do all
that is done.
I have before said that his voice is harsh and breaking
in his high tones, in his rage, but that this defect
is of little consequence in such places. Nor is it well
is scarce worth considering; for how very little is
there of mere declamation in good English plays!
But it is one of the finest voices in the world for all
the passions and feelings which can be uttered in the
middle and lower tones. In Lear —
And again,
Thou art a soul in bliss.”
Why should I cite passages? Can any man open
upon the scene in which these are contained, without
Kean's piteous looks and tones being present to him?
And does not the mere remembrance of them, as he
reads, bring tears into his eyes? Yet, once more, in
Othello —
To try me with affliction,” & c.
In the passage beginning with —
Farewell the tranquil mind,” —
there was “a mysterious confluence of sounds” passing
off into infinite distance, and every thought and
feeling within him seemed travelling with them.
How very graceful he is in Othello. It is not a
practised, educated grace, but the “unbought grace”
of his genius, uttering itself in its beauty and grandeur
in each movement of the outward man. When he
says to Iago so touchingly, “Leave me, leave me,
Iago,” and turning from him, walks to the back of the
stage, raising his hands, and bringing them down upon
his head, with clasped fingers, and stands thus with
grandeur in his figure which we gaze on with admiration.
Talking of these things in Kean, is something like
reading the “Beauties of Shakspeare;” for he is as
good in his subordinate, as in his great parts. But
he must be content to share with other men of genius,
and think himself fortunate if one in a hundred sees
his lesser beauties, and marks the truth and delicacy
of his under playing. For instance; when he has no
share in the action going on, he is not busy in putting
himself into attitudes to draw attention, but stands or
sits in a simple posture, like one with an engaged
mind. His countenance is in a state of ordinary repose,
with only a slight, general expression of the
character of his thoughts; for this is all the face shows,
when the mind is taken up in silence with its own reflections.
It does not assume marked or violent expressions,
as in soliloquy. When a man gives utterance
to his thoughts, though alone, the charmed rest
of the body is broken; he speaks in his gestures too,
and the countenance is put into a sympathizing action.
I was first struck with this in his Hamlet; for the
deep and quiet interest, so marked in Hamlet, made
the justness of Kean's playing, in this respect, the
more obvious.
Since then, I have observed him attentively, and
have found the same true acting in his other characters.
This right conception of situation and its general
effect, seems to require almost as much genius as his
conceptions of his characters. He deserves praise
for it; for there is so much of the subtilty of nature
in it, if I may so speak, that while a very few are able
admire the justness of his acting in it, the rest, both
those who like him upon the whole, as well as those
who profess to see little that is good in him, will be
very apt to let it pass by them, without observing it.
Like most men, however, Kean receives a partial
reward, at least, for his sacrifice of the praise of the
many, to what he thinks the truth. For when he passes
from the state of natural repose, even into that of gentle
motion and ordinary discourse, he is at once filled
with a spirit and life which he makes every one feel
who is not armour proof against him. This helps to
the sparkling brightness and warmth of his playing;
the grand secret of which, like that of colours in a
picture, lies in a just contrast. We can all speculate
concerning the general rules upon this; but when the
man of genius gives us their results, how few are
there who can trace them out with an observant eye,
or look with a full pleasure upon the grand whole.
Perhaps this very beauty in Kean has helped to an
opinion, which, no doubt, is sometimes true, that he
is too sharp and abrupt. For I well remember, while
once looking at a picture in which the shadow of a
mountain fell, in strong outline, upon a stream, I overheard
some quite sensible people expressing their
wonder that the artist should have made the water of
two colours, seeing it was all one and the same thing.
Instances of Kean's keeping of situations were very
striking in the opening of the trial scene in the Iron
Chest, and in Hamlet, when the father's ghost tells
the story of his death.
The determined composure to which he is bent up
in the first, must be present with every one who saw
him. And, though from my immediate purpose, shall
madness seized upon his brain, with the deadly swiftness
and power of a fanged monster? Wonderfully as
this last part was played, we cannot well imagine how
much the previous calm, and the suddenness of the
unlooked for change from it added to the terror of the
scene. — The temple stood fixed on its foundations;
the earthquake shook it, and it was a heap. — Is this
one of Kean's violent contrasts?
While Kean listened, in Hamlet, to the father's
story, the entire man was absorbed in deep attention,
mingled with a tempered awe. His posture was quite
simple, with a slight inclination forward. The spirit
was the spirit of his father whom he had loved and
reverenced, and who was to that moment ever present
in his thoughts. The first superstitious terror at meeting
him had passed off. The account of his father's
appearance given him by Horatio and the watch, and
his having followed him some distance, had, in a
degree familiarized him to the sight, and he stood
before us in the stillness of one who was to hear, then
or never, what was to be told, but without that eager
reaching forward which other players give, and which
would be right, perhaps, in any character but that of
Hamlet, who always connects, with the present, the
past and what is to come, and mingles reflection with
his immediate feelings, however deep.
As an instance of Kean's familiar, and, if I may be
allowed the term, domestic acting, the first scene in
the fourth act of his Sir Giles Overreach, may be
taken. His manner at meeting Lovell, and through
the conversation with him, the way in which he turns
his chair, and leans upon it, were all as easy and
natural as they could have been in real life, had Sir
in conversation in Lovell's room.
It is in these things, scarcely less than in the more
prominent parts of his playing, that Kean shows himself
the great actor. He must always make a deep
impression; but to suppose the world at large capable
of a right estimate of his various powers, would be
forming a judgment against every-day proof. The
gradual manner in which the character of his playing
has opened upon me, satisfies me that in acting, as in
every thing else, however great may be the first effect
of genius upon us, we come slowly, and through study,
to a perception of its minute beauties and fine characteristics;
and that, after all, the greater part of men
seldom get beyond the first vague and general impression.
As there must needs go a modicum of fault-finding
along with commendation, it may be proper to remark,
that Kean plays his hands too much at times, and
moves about the dress over his breast and neck too
frequently in his hurried and impatient passages, —
that he does not always adhere with sufficient accuracy
to the received readings of Shakspeare, and that the
effect would be greater upon the whole, were he to
be more sparing of sudden changes from violent voice
and gesticulation to a low conversation tone and
subdued manner.
His frequent use of these in Sir Giles Overreach is
with great effect, for Sir Giles is playing his part; so,
too, in Lear, for Lear's passions are gusty and shifting;
but, in the main, it is a kind of playing too marked
and striking to bear frequent repetition, and had better
sometimes be spared, where, considered alone, it
might be properly enough used, for the sake of bringing
it in at some other place with greater effect.
It is well to speak of these defects, for though the
little faults of genius, in themselves considered, but
slightly affect those who can enter into its true character,
yet such persons are made impatient at the
thought, that an opportunity is given those to carp
who know not how to commend.
Though I have taken up a good deal of room, I
must end without speaking of many things which occur
to me. Some will be of the opinion that I have
already said enough. Thinking of Kean as I do, I
could not honestly have said less; for I hold it to be
a low and wicked thing to keep back from merit of
any kind its due, — and with Steele, that “there is
something wonderful in the narrowness of those minds
which can be pleased, and be barren of bounty to
those who please them.”
Although the self-important, out of self-concern, give
praise sparingly, and the mean measure theirs by
their likings or dislikings of a man, and the good even
are often slow to allow the talents of the faulty their
due, lest they bring the evil into repute, yet it is the
wiser as well as the honester course, not to take away
from an excellence, because it neighbours upon a
fault, nor to disparage another with a view to our own
name, nor to rest our character for discernment upon
the promptings of an unkind heart. Where God has
not feared to bestow great powers, we may not fear
giving them their due; nor need we be parsimonious
of commendation, as if there were but a certain quantity
for distribution, and our liberality would be to
our loss; nor should we hold it safe to detract from
another's merit, as if we could always keep the world
blind; lest we live to see him, whom we disparaged,
praised; and whom we hated, loved.
Whatever be his failings, give every man a full
and ready commendation for that in which he excels;
it will do good to our own hearts, while it cheers his.
Nor will it bring our judgement into question with the
discerning; for strong enthusiasm for what is great
does not argue such an unhappy want of discrimination,
as that measured and cold approval, which is
bestowed alike upon men of mediocrity, and upon
those of gifted minds.
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