Edmund Kean

Edmund Kean
Kean as Sir Giles Overreach in Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Born	(1787-11-04)4 November 1787 Westminster, London
Died	15 May 1833(1833-05-15) (aged 45)
Other names	British
Occupation	Actor
Children	Charles Kean

Edmund Kean (4 November 1787 – 15 May 1833) was a celebrated British Shakespearean stage actor born in England, who performed in London, Belfast, New York, Quebec, and Paris among other places. He was well known for his short stature, tumultuous personal life, and controversial divorce.

Kean was born in Westminster London. His father was probably Edmund Kean, an architect’s clerk, and his mother was an actress, Anne Carey, daughter of the 18th-century composer and playwright Henry Carey.

Kean made his first appearance on the stage, aged four, as Cupid in Jean-Georges Noverre’s ballet of Cymon. As a child his vivacity, cleverness and ready affection made him a universal favorite, but his harsh circumstances and lack of discipline, both helped develop self-reliance and fostered wayward tendencies. About 1794 a few benevolent persons paid for him to go to school, where he did well; but finding the restraint intolerable, he shipped as a cabin boy at Portsmouth. Finding life at sea even more restricting, he pretended to be both deaf and lame so skilfully that he deceived the doctors at Madeira.

On his return to England, he sought the protection of his uncle, Moses Kean, a mimic, ventriloquist and general entertainer, who, besides continuing his pantomimic studies, introduced him to the study of Shakespeare. At the same time, Miss Charlotte Tidswell, an actress who had been especially kind to him from infancy, taught him the principles of acting.

On the death of his uncle, she took charge of him, and he began the systematic study of the principal Shakespearean characters, displaying the peculiar originality of his genius by interpretations entirely different from those of John Philip Kemble, then considered the great exponent of these roles. Kean’s talents and interesting countenance caused a Mrs Clarke to adopt him, but he took offense at the comments of a visitor and suddenly left her house and went back to his old surroundings.

Aged fourteen, he obtained an engagement to play leading characters for twenty nights in the York Theatre, appearing as Hamlet, Hastings and Cato.