I had scarcely thought of the theater for some 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 theater, or
looking upon a great 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 theater my
school, and henceforward study nature at second hand.
How can I describe one who is almost as full of beauties as nature
itself,--who grows upon us the more we become acquainted with him, and
makes us sensible that the first time we saw him in any part, however
much he may have moved us, we had but a partial apprehension of the
many excellences of his acting? We cease to consider it as a mere
amusement. It is an 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 do in many other
ways in twice the time. Our faculties are opened and enlivened by it;
our reflections and recollections are of an elevated kind; and the 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 continual 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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