July 1843

This is part of a local history note on performances at Richmond's Theatre Royale. See the start of this local history note.

Date: 17^th July 1843

Plays:

• Shakespeare, Hamlet
• Charles Dance, Naval Engagements

The Company included:

Charles Kean (1811 to  1868)

Charles Kean was the second son of Edmund Kean who sent him to Eton in the hope that he would eventually follow a non-theatrical career. In 1827 he was offered a cadetship in the East India Company’s service but refused to accept it until his father settled an allowance on his mother, from whom the elder Kean was separated. A quarrel ensued between father and son. Charles, with no apparent difficulty, secured for himself an engagement at Drury Lane – the theatre from which his father had recently severed his connections – and first appeared there in October 1827 as Young Norval in Douglas. In this and other early performances, Charles tended to imitate slavishly his father’s mannerisms on stage and the critics were hostile. In 1826 he was reconciled with his father and in October of that year appeared with him in Glasgow in Howard Payne’s tragedy Brutus. They also acted together in Dublin the following year in Othello and The Merchant of Venice. Charles visited America in 1830 for a two-year tour and received favourable reviews and returned to England in 1833. He married the actress Ellen Tree in January 1842. She had appeared with him at various times earlier during his career. They presented a somewhat a quaint sight to observers when walking out together as Cecil Ferard Armstrong describes in A Century of Great Actors (1912): "Charles wore long hair which only accentuates the insignificance of his queer little face. Mrs Kean was always most respectably dressed with a poke-bonnet and enormous hoops, which, when they became rebellious, as they sometimes did, revealed chaste white stockings and flat-heeled shoes." In partnership with Robert Keeley, Charles entered on a lease of the Princes Theatre, London in 1850. Later, after Keeley had retired from the management, Kean began the series of spectacular revivals for which he is best remembered. The first of these was King John in February 1852 with Charles playing the leading role. At this time he also scored a great success in Boucicault’s adaptation of Casimir de la Vigne’s Corsican Brothers. It was not long, however before his lavish scenic effects began to receive adverse criticism. Blackwood’s Magazine of 1852 carried the following comments: "Mr Kean has great merits, quick appreciation, sound intelligence and occasionally a burst of something which, if it is not genius, is describable by no other word. But he is certainly mistaken in relying so much on the resources of the 'costumier' and the 'painter'." His last performance took place in Liverpool in May 1867 when he played one of his best parts, that of Louis XI. Charles Kean was a painstaking and conscientious actor, though not a great one. With the exception of Hamlet and perhaps Richard III, most of his performances were generally regarded as failures.

James Robertson Anderson (1811 to 1895)

James Robertson Anderson made his London debut in September 1837 when he appeared with Macready at Covent Garden. Later, on the opening of the same theatre under the Vestris-Mathews management, he played Biron in Love’s Labours Lost. From 1849 to 1851 he was the manager at Drury Lane. Anderson’s original included Basil Firebrace in Jerrold’s Prisoners of War, Earl Mertoun on Blot on the ‘Scutcheon by Robert Browning and Charles Courtly on Boucicault’s London Assurance. He had a fine speaking voice which deteriorated in his later years.