The riots were renewed on various occasions again, and though the frightened managers, by the aid of apologies and humiliations of all sorts, staved off a repetition of violence, the fate of the new house as a paying concern was sealed; it had been a mistake artistically and financially from the first, and soon ceased to be used as a theatre. A poodle drove Goethe’s and Schiller’s plays from the stage of the Weimar Theatre, the “dog Carlo” and Master Betty drove _Macbeth_ and _Coriolanus_ from Covent Garden; in both instances, the public was justified in its conclusions, but not in the manner in which it expressed them. By their suppression of all applause and the restrictions they laid on their audience, the potentates of Weimar stopped all dramatic spontaneity; by the size and unwieldiness of the theatre they built, and the banishment of the lower part of the audience to a distance from the stage, the proprietors of Covent Garden deprived their art of the indispensable verdict of the ordinary public. The Kembles’ school of dramatic art also was passing away. They had substituted for the naturalness and variety of Garrick’s style a measured and stately dignity. This stateliness was now destined to be succeeded by the impetuosity and spontaneous passion of Kean. We have seen that one of the boys introduced by John Kemble into the Witches’ Scene in _Macbeth_, and subsequently turned away for disobedience, was named Edmund Kean. This little imp, undeterred by hardship, degradation, and misery, had developed into one of the greatest geniuses that ever trod the English stage. Many are the stories given of Mrs. Siddons’s first meeting with Kean, but all are unanimous that it was by no means a creditable performance so far as the young actor was concerned. It was in Ireland, either at Belfast or Cork. Kean had been engaged to act with her. As usual, instead of learning his part, he employed the interim between her arrival and the play in drinking with some friends, with such success that when he came upon the stage the whole of his part had vanished from his memory; he was, therefore, obliged to improvise as he went on. Needless to say, his performance was a tissue of nonsense, sentences without meaning, drunken absurdities of all sorts. The audience was not a critical one, but Mrs. Siddons’s disgust may be imagined. The next play to be performed was _Douglas_, and in this Kean played Young Norval. Whether he was ashamed, and wished to show the great actress that he, too, was an actor, it is impossible to say, but he imparted such pathos and spirit to the part, that she was surprised into admiration. After the play (Kean himself tells us) she came to him, and patting him on the head, said: “You have played well, Sir. It’s a pity, but there’s too little of you to do anything.”