Kean. An actor who had supported Macready with credit was just the actor
likely to be useful to a manager who was producing a series of plays by
Shakespeare. Kate had been a success at the Princess's, too, in child
parts, and this may have reminded Mr. Kean to send for Kate's father! At
any rate he was sent for towards the end of the year 1853 and left
Liverpool for London. I know I cooked his breakfasts for him in
Liverpool, but I haven't the slightest recollection of the next two
years in London. As I am determined not to fill up the early blanks with
stories of my own invention, I must go straight on to 1856, when
rehearsals were called at the Princess's Theater for Shakespeare's
"Winter's Tale."


THE CHARLES KEANS

1856

The Charles Keans from whom I received my first engagement, were both
remarkable people, and at the Princess Theater were doing very
remarkable work. Kean the younger had not the fire and genius of his
wonderful father, Edmund, and but for the inherited splendor of his name
it is not likely that he would ever have attained great eminence as an
actor. His Wolsey and his Richard (the Second, not the Third) were his
best parts, perhaps because in them his beautiful diction had full scope
and his limitations were not noticeable. But it is more as a stage
reformer than as an actor that he will be remembered. The old
happy-go-lucky way of staging plays, with its sublime indifference to
correctness of detail and its utter disregard of archaeology, had
received its first blow from Kemble and Macready, but Charles Kean gave
it much harder knocks and went further than either of them in the good