"Kean" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believe that Lord Bacon or any other man wrote Shakespeare's plays, I never discuss the question with them, for I have no arguments to withstand their claims," said Mrs. Pitt intently. "I only remind myself that if such men as Browning, Thackeray, Kean, Scott, and Carlyle, who have all left their signatures here, believed that the 'immortal Shakespeare' wrote his own plays, I can feel safe in believing so, too. Therefore I want you to understand, children, that ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under the conditions he himself desired for it. For The Cenci was written absolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley's own wishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetime at Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principal parts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefully the aesthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama is disinterested presentation, and that the characters must ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... freshness, spontaneity, abandon. Among English artists of a bygone age her style might probably find a parallel in the stately elegance and artificial grandeur of the Kembles. It has nothing in common with the electric verve and romantic ardor of Edmund Kean. Of the feu sacre which irradiated Rachel and gives to Bernhardt splendor ineffable, Miss Anderson has not a spark. She is not inspired. Hers is a pure, bright, steady light; but it lacks mystic effulgence. It is not empyreal. It is not 'the light that never was on sea or land—the ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... character. The feeling of character and the felicity of invention in explaining it were nearly allied to each other. The first was so wrought up and running over that the transition to the last was very easy and unavoidable. When Mr. Kean was so much praised for the action of Richard in his last struggle with his triumphant antagonist, where he stands, after his sword is wrested from him, with his hands stretched out, 'as if his will could not be disarmed, and the very phantoms of his despair had a withering ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... hall, which is 40 feet square and was decorated in the most splendid manner. Among the decorations was a statue of Washington, and portraits of William Penn, Franklin, Robert Morris, Francis Hopkinson, Greene, Wayne, Montgomery, Hamilton, Gates, Rochambeau, Charles Carrot, M'Kean, Jefferson, Hancock, Adams, Madison, Monroe, and Charles Thompson.— The portrait of Washington, by Peale, occupied the first place, and was the most splendidly decorated. Here were assembled the city authorities, the society of Cincinnati, the judges, officers of the army and navy, ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... of course, spend heavily on education—more than we spend on defense. Yet across our country, Governors like New Jersey's Tom Kean are giving classroom demonstrations that how we spend is as important as how much we spend. Opening up the teaching profession to all qualified candidates, merit pay—so that good teachers get A's as well as apples—and stronger curriculum, as Secretary Bennett has proposed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... appraisement for all the houses where the great poets were born. But all the world comes to this lowly dwelling. Walter Scott was glad to scratch his name on the window, and you may see it now. Charles Dickens, Edmund Kean, Albert Smith, Mark Lemon and Tennyson, so very sparing of their autographs, have left their signatures on the wall. There are the jambs of the old fire-place where the poet warmed himself and combed wool, and began to think for all time. Here is the chair in which ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... occasion when we were playing "Uncle Tiff," the old man was grateful because I relieved him of that character. It was a pathetic part—a sort of nigger being left in charge of children after the parents' death. Old Copeland was a good actor, and he told me of having travelled with Edmund Kean, the great tragedian. He was then about eighty years of age, and was brimful of anecdote and humour about men and things on the stage. He himself was an author of many MS. plays, and the most agreeable of company, being an educated man. But we had to part ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Princess's Theatre occupies the site of a large bazaar known as Queen's Bazaar. It has been many times remodelled and rebuilt. The latest rebuilding was in 1879. Its chief claim to notice is that here took place Kean's ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... instead of putting pressure on contemporary authors to supply him with heroic parts, falls back on the Shakespearean repertory, and takes what he needs from a dead hand. In the nineteenth century, the careers of Kean, Macready, Barry Sullivan, and Irving, ought to have produced a group of heroic plays comparable in intensity to those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; but nothing of the kind happened: these actors played the works of dead authors, or, very ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... respectable homes, but could n't get anything comfortable for their little money. I 'm one of them, and I know the worth of what she does for me. Two old widow ladies live below me, several students overhead, poor Mrs. Kean and her lame boy have the back parlor, and Jenny the little bedroom next Miss Mills. Each pays what they can; that 's independent, and makes us feel better but that dear woman does a thousand things that money can't pay for, and we feel her influence all through the house. I 'd rather be ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... as the founder of the modern spectacular system, though it had some precedents, and has been developed since his day. Charles Kean, between 1851 and 1859, persistently endeavoured by prodigal and brilliant display to make the production of Shakespeare an enterprise of profit at the Princess's Theatre, London. The ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... shipped by Lieutenant M'Kean, now Commander M'Kean, a grandson of the old Governor of Pennsylvania, as they tell me. All hands of us were sent on board the Cyane, an English prize twenty-gun ship, where we remained about six weeks. A draft was then made, and more than ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... H. Kean, a young man, and a connection of Mr. Randolph, has been appointed Chief of the Bureau of War in place of Col. Bledsoe, resigned at last. Mr. Kean was, I believe, a lieutenant when Mr. Randolph was colonel, and acted ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... party and was mortally wounded just as he reached the parapet. He crawled back with difficulty, and in spite of his wounds continued to direct the advance; the men were somewhat shaken by losing their leader and were inclined to hang back, but C.S.M. M'Kean, who was in the rear of the party and still in the tunnel, pushed his way forward, put the necessary stiffening into the men and led them into the trench. The consolidating party were now working down the tunnel and their progress was extremely difficult as each man was ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... imagination (and this mental condition, by the way, is impossible to the student sitting in his armchair); but the great actor's surprises are generally well weighed, studied, and balanced. We know that Edmund Kean constantly practised before a mirror effects which startled his audience by their apparent spontaneity. It is the accumulation of such effects which enables an actor, after many years, to present many great characters ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... Theatre in Philadelphia, and extremely well received. It had indeed a successful run. The Betrothal, which in our last we omitted to notice, is, we understand, to be brought out under the auspices of Charles Kean, in London. Mr. B. has yet another comedy quite finished, which will soon be performed ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Drury Lane, was a favourite resort of the Elder KEAN, and in 1841 had a club-room divided into four wards: Gin Ward, Poverty Ward, Insanity Ward, and Suicide Ward, the walls of which were appropriately illustrated, and by no mean hand. The others named (with the exception of PADDY ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... interesting man. He is coming very much to the front as a political and philosophic writer. It is said he is to be the editor of The Empire, that new monthly which they say is to take the lead of all the magazines. I met him at Professor Kean's last week. I don't think he sees me—Good-evening! Don't think you remember me—Mrs. Needham. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Professor Kean's last Monday. Mr. Errington, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... round. He moreover called the attention of Lord Byron, then on the Committee of Management of Drury Lane Theatre, to the play, and his Lordship strongly recommended a performance of it. Thanks to the splendid acting of Kean, it succeeded, and Maturin ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid. The other not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large-brained, full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to breakfast with old Samuel Rogers, as some of my readers have done more than once, and hear him answer to the question who was the best actor he remembered, "I think, on ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... back in the familiar exits and entrances. The words were innocent enough as he altered them in reading for Kitty, though a good deal disjointed as to meaning; but she was not critical—forced herself to take an interest in his stories of Burton and Kean, and how ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... built in 1764, and had a deer's head for a sign. Afterwards it was known as the "Roebuck Tavern," John Brooks being its last landlord. It was first occupied as a public house in 1820, and it was the place of refuge of Edmund Kean when driven by a mob from the (old) Boston ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... of your new play I judge that it was written by the shade of Shakespeare in collaboration with the ghost of Moliere, and that your acting in it combines all the genius of Rachel, Kean, Booth, Mrs. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... named La Rue presented himself as an imitator of celebrated histrionic personages, including Macready, Forrest, Kemble, the elder Booth, Kean, Hamblin, and others. Taking him into the green-room for a private rehearsal, and finding his imitations excellent, Barnum engaged him. For three nights he gave great satisfaction, but early in the fourth evening he staggered into the Museum so drunk that he could hardly stand, and in half ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... more so than Garrick or Mrs. Siddons or John Kemble or Edmund Kean. They understood Edmund Kean. All reflexion is ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... of black hats (second-hand), which are supposed to have been blown off the heads of unwary passengers in remote parts of the town, and have been industriously picked up by the fishermen. Charles Kean was advertised for Othello 'for the benefit of Mrs. Sefton, having most kindly postponed for this one day his departure for London.' I have not heard whether he got to the theatre, but I am sure ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... much indeed, and had by no means seen Thespis at his best. Even nowadays, middle-aged playgoers, old enough to remember the late Mr. Macready, are trumped, as it were, by older playgoers, boastful of their memories of Kemble and the elder Kean. And these players, in their day and in their turn, underwent disparagement at the hands of veterans who had seen Garrick. Pope, much as he admired Garrick, yet held fast to his old faith in Betterton. From a boy he had been acquainted with Betterton. He maintained Betterton ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... character as a boy, and a portrait of old John Reeve, a celebrated comedian in his day; there was Mr. Toole as Paw Clawdian; there was Liston as Paul Pry; there were any amount of portraits of his dear old friend Henry Irving. I was much interested in an old theatrical bill of 1813 announcing Edmund Kean's appearance as Hamlet. And then Mr. Toole brought in a large framed letter which hung up in the hall. It was a letter from Thackeray to Charles Matthews when he was lessee of Covent Garden Theatre, and it was written on the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... yet prove a Tartar, And Bylong's the horse that can stay, But Kean is in trouble—and Carter Is hard on the satin-skinn'd bay; And The Barb comes away unextended, Hard held, like a second Eclipse, While behind the hoof-thunder is blended With the whistling and crackling ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon |
