Shakespearean A-Lister visits Tewkesbury

Edmund Kean was the Laurence Olivier of his day.

His appearance in Tewkesbury is a major coup for the town… and don’t they know it!

As this playbill from the British Library collection shows, it’s a star appearance which has clearly put the prices up. The theatre management have added in the ‘small-print’ “..IN consequence of Mr Kean’s Terms, the admission to the Boxes must be 4s. Pit 2s 6d. Gallery 1s.6d" (compared to another playbill from the same year it looks like an extra shilling on the price of a box and 6d for those in the pit or gallery!)

The author of the playbill knows he’s attracted a stellar talent to Tewkesbury, describing Kean as the “first tragedian of the day”.

Although there’s a lot of detail on this playbill we can only guess how Kean’s performance was received.

However the author is confident enough to state he’d like to continue to attract the finest actors in the country, provided of course the spectators fill the seats.

Kean was becoming increasingly famous for his portrayal of Shakespearean villains such as Shylock and Richard III, a part he plays here in Tewkesbury.

Small of stature, one critic, the poet Coleridge, described his stage presence as “like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightening”.

Illegitimate, brought up by his uncle’s mistress who was a small-part member of the Drury Lane Theatre Company, Kean had as dramatic a life off-stage as on.

Scandal stalked his life – he was sensationally fined for ‘criminal conversation’ (adultery), which in these pre-Victorian times didn’t play well with audiences who booed and jeered when he returned to the stage.

Unable to settle and fiercely ambitious, Kean took on the life of a strolling player from the age of 15 till 1814 when he made his London debut at Drury Lane. His breakthrough role was as Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

Kean wore a black beard instead of the traditional comic red beard and wig. His voice was hoarse because he had to project to fill the big theatre, but also, more prosaically because of his heavy drinking.

As well as making his name in London’s premier theatres, Kean performed in America, Paris and Quebec.

He died at the age of 45, just eight years after this performance. Indeed his last appearance in America was in the part of Richard III.

On his death it is said that his final words were : “dying is easy: comedy is hard”.