Cracked Actor - Edmund Kean 1825

rogues gallery online sex drugs and period costume real historical figures behaving very badly treating keep'em Keene wine women and song and more wine and women with Regency England's most scandalous actor edmund kean the following content is not suitable for anyone aged under 16 or adults who are very easily shocked or offended if this is you turn back now loveable rogues who remain please like share and subscribe and if you could find it in your decadent hearts to support me on patreon I would be overcome with gratitude link is in the description below Drury Lane London 1825 teen teen where are you you blackguard if you're passed out pissed again I swear I will swing for you you drunken SOT have you got your head so far underneath some trollop skirt that you can't hear me you're on in 20 minutes keen a man is a bloody nightmare he drinks till he doesn't know who he is umm fights anything with a pulse he's rude argumentative arrogant high-handed and eccentric have you seen what he keeps in his dressing room a Mike Dodd can he act he's been on the stage since he was four years of age playing cupid no less which is somewhat apt considering how many women he gets through these days he tells me that his mother who was a failed teenage actress and prostitute all but abandoned him as a child his father had chucked himself out of an upstairs window shortly after he was born so could provide no guiding hand anyway she buggered off to join a company of strolling players and left him in the and I use the term loosely care of her and I use the term loosely again nurse this nurse treated the infant so badly that his legs ended up deformed and had to be straightened by the use of iron calipers it was only through the ministrations of a kindly woman who was also in the theatrical profession by the name of Miss Tidwell that he survived at all it was miss Tidwell who put the little bugger on the stage usually in pantomimes but occasionally in proper plays he was forever running around in personating the other actors apparently when he was in Hamlet he fell over and brought two of the apparitions crashing down with him which caused the audience to howl with laughter let it not be said though that theater folk aren't generous and despite his feckless mother's misgivings she'd reappeared when he started to earn a little bit of money a place was found for the lad at school he hated it said he wanted to leave got thrashed by his mother for his cheek and ran away to Portsmouth with the intention he said of becoming a cabin boy a few weeks later he was back telling everyone that he'd signed on to a ship but because he'd been sorely ill treated while at sea it pretended to fall ill with deafness and facial paralysis and was so convincing that doctors on the island of Madeira had immediately sent him home I take gammon on his return he learned that his mother had gone off on tour with another group of players so misty dwelle took him back underneath her wing and he started to perform in local taverns as an entertainer singing popular songs performing jokes and impressions you know the kind of thing he was so good that soon he was entertaining the gentry in their very own homes at the age of 12 he performed in front of King George who gave the lad a golden Guinea he also visited Cambridge University where one of the students presented him with his first copy of Shakespeare a text he would absorb daily from then on at the time he could have found a very powerful patron in the shape of John Campbell England's greatest actor well at least he was then but he spoiled his chances by taking the piss out of the great man backstage the lad was desperate to perform and be famous he joined the circus of all things riding fiery untamed steeds but the damned wolf fell off and broke both of his legs back in London and back under the care of Miss Tidwell he began to actually study acting a process which requires patience something that he's never had when he was 14 he began what would be a long and frustrating apprenticeship in provincial theater we've all done it but keen thought he deserved to be a star without having to wait all work for it you know for he joined the Samuel Jerrold company they recognized his enormous talent but wouldn't make in their lead actor so he left after a year as a member of another company in Belfast he had some small roles in productions starring the incomparable Sarah Siddons who called him a horrid little man she did however grudgingly admit that he possessed no little talent one thing he could knock you with though is little keen is most definitely a short us he only comes up to about the shoulder of most leading men which might I suppose have something to do with the vehemence with which he needs to prove himself the thing about young keen was that he felt insulted if he wasn't offered the lead role in any play in which he was cast he once told me how outraged he was when they asked him to understudy Alexandre ray understudy he cried me one enterprising company manager took advantage of this by giving him the lead in as many plays as he liked so long as he accepted a complete pittance of a wage he was so bloody arrogant that he accepted trouble was he seduced the wife of a local businessman who then hired a group of toughs to give him a beating so he ran away sharpish he met his poor wife Mary when he joined his next company in Gloucester nine years his senior she's nothing special on the stage but she must have the heart of a saint to put up with him if the life of a travelling actor wasn't difficult enough even one with keynes talent and growing reputation his difficult ways made things even harder they were so poor that they once had to travel all the way from Birmingham to Swansea on foot keen said that he was dressed from head to toe in blue with four swords over my shoulder suspending a family bundle of clothes like some down-on-his-luck naval officer the couple Mary was pregnant with her third child at the time secured just enough money to survive by entertaining calls at village inns occasionally kind-hearted folk would accept no payment for the meals which they provided but one bunch of heartless bastards wouldn't even give Mary a draught of milk when she was gripped by premature labor pains damnable yokels their destitution grew so severe that at one point keen tried to take the King's shilling and join the army with the recruiting sergeant seeing the couple's plight refused to enlist him on another occasion after walking miles to honor an engagement in Essex he was unable to afford the ferry across the River Thames so he tied his clothes up into a bundle and fastened them around his neck then naked as the day he was born swam to the other side before continuing on his way he reached the theater on time and made it to the stage but collapsed in the middle of one of the scenes and was laid up with fever for weeks afterwards the appalling reality of his circumstances combined with the lofty heights of where he thought he should be combined to drive keen evermore into the arms of his greatest enemy drink he was always to be found taking solace in some tavern or another often just before the curtain rose on a plane which he was performing where's Kane somebody would ask at the three horseshoes would come the reply and off that have to go to drag him out of the tap room and stick his head under a pump of freezing cold water so that he could deliver his lines the final straw came when he was too drunk to be revived and his company manager a fellow called Hughes had to go on stage and read his part in his stead when Keane woke up and still in a state of abject inebriation he crept into the theatre and up to a private box whereby he proceeded to loudly and drunkenly heckle his managers performance Bravo Hughes Bravo he shouted well done my boy well done keen then had to be physically thrown out of the theatre within a week he was dismissed in Guernsey that same year 1813 I think it was he was on the receiving end of booze and cat calls from the audience when he delivered what they considered to be a somewhat lackluster portrayal of Richard the third this might have had something to do with the fact that brandy is extraordinarily cheap on the island a furious cane stopped the play and as the booze turned to hissing confronted his abusers demanding that they show themselves unmannered dogs he raged stand ye when I command the audience erupted with outrage at being so addressed and keen was once again forcibly removed from the stage disappointment followed disappointment until that fateful day in 1814 when edmund kean star finally began to shine he was absent mindedly playing the part of Alexander the Great in Dorchester to an audience of about eight people when he was approached by samuel arnold the manager of the Drury Lane theater here in London I'll be honest the theater wasn't doing so well financially so they were looking at a way to hire any new talent they could find to get the public back in through the doors Keane apologized for playing his part without any enthusiasm but as he was sure the eminent mr. Arnold could appreciate the audience was meagre and the venue uninspiring he needn't have bothered Keens reputation had preceded him and a contract was offered on the spot after a great deal of frustrating - in and froing Keane had just signed a contract with another company he began to appear as a contract player at Drury Lane but not in any leading roles after vigorously complaining he was finally offered the role of [ __ ] in a Merchant of Venice he knew that this opportunity could either take him to the heavens or plummet him into permanent obscurity the night of his performance was freezing cold with drifts of heavy snow making many of the streets impassable when he arrived at Drury Lane the audience was somewhat on the thin side most people preferring to warm their backsides in front of a roaring fire than go to the theatre to make matters worse keen had been given a squalid little room in which to prepare while actors in lesser roles donned their robes in comfortable chambers upstairs Keane eventually changed in the Super's room surrounded by the most junior members of the cast when he came out he determined to show all those who doubted and disliked him that the one thing they couldn't do was ignore him at first there was consternation when his time to perform came near as he couldn't be found in his quarters or the super room eventually the lad sent to find him saw cane waiting in the wings eyes bright with nervous fervor you're called sir he stammered thank you replied keen and you know they say that those were the only words not written by William Shakespeare to come out of his mouth the whole evening his arrival was met with polite applause but when he began to speak those in the audience were stunned by his power and gripped by his intensity up until then you see [ __ ] had been played for comic effect or as some kind of evil monster keen with his piercing eyes and powerful voice painted him as far more than just one facet of the human character he was complex even sympathetic by the end of the third act the audience were frantically applauding him so much so the people backstage ran to the wings to see what all the fuss was about keen however seemed aloof from it all he left the theatre after saying his last lines and was on his way home before the players even ended in the morning Chronicle the renowned theatre critic William Hazlitt wrote that in edmund kean [ __ ] he had seen the first gleam of genius breaking a thought the gloom of the stage still in raptures he added for voice I action and expression no actor has come out for many years at all equal to him the following night's performance took double the takings of its predecessor as word began to sweep through London society that a new star was in the ascendant his fellow actors reacted with jealousy during the applause that followed his fifth performance one of them said it is only necessary nowadays to be under four foot high have bandy legs and a hoarseness and mince my liver but you'll be thought of tragedian they felt that keen was a flash in the pan and soon to be eclipsed by a more conventional performer like Richard Campbell they were wrong Edmund Kane has come to dominate the English stage there was only one thing amiss before his legendary opening night keen said if I succeed I shall go mad well he got that right a blast ignite mer his next role was Richard the third and we were turning people away at the door Lord Byron who was about 26 at the time came to see him in those days you knew you were at the very center of the fashionable world when he deigned to grace you with his language presence after the play he wrote just returned from seeing keenan richard by Jove he is a soul life nature truth without exaggeration or diminution Richard is a man and keen is Richard and all this despite the fact that Cain was suffering from a cold that made him snuffle his way through some of his lines he'd had to cancel a performance a few days before because of it and Cecil Street became jammed with carriages full of well-wishers bringing him handkerchiefs and asking after his health it was only a bloody cold and so it continued Hamlet Othello Macbeth King Lear if Shakespeare wrote it Keane wanted to play the lead and crowds and critics alike flock to see him do it it wasn't just the Bard though he played Barabbas in Marlowe's the Jew of Malta and Sir Giles overreach in messengers a new way to pay old debts if a part required fashion weeping raging and hopefully having a dramatic death scene then keen was your man his tears after murdering Duncan in Macbeth it was said beggar description and such was his immersion in the role of King Lear that he claimed I could not feel the stage under me it all this adoration go to his head of course it bloody did he bought himself a horse which he called [ __ ] and used a ride recklessly about town upon it in the middle of the night also some misguided fool presented him with a tame lion which he kept in his drawing-room growling and pouring at the furniture and then as I've said it was his drinking while he was constantly invited to the homes of the great and the good when he wasn't talking about himself keen had very little to say he certainly couldn't match the ready wit and cultured intelligence of his betters so he'd sit with a glass in his hand looking miserable and muttering about how anyone who turned the conversation away from acting and his expertise at doing it was doing so deliberately to embarrass him he therefore spent most of his time in lowly taverns where he felt his audience's intellectual superior and where his fame and a newfound wealth meant he was always the center of attention and always pissed while he was in Richard the third he and a fellow actor went to a tavern a few hours before curtain up and got heroically tight when during the performance he slurred thee now is the winter of our discontent speech like some kind of lisping Scotsman the audience started laughing at him his tavern companion had yet to appear on stage so he turned to the audience and said if you think I'm drunk wait till you see the Duke of Buckingham on another occasion he was appearing in a play called the Duke of Milan but he got himself so drunk in Deptford that he couldn't make it back to the theatre they had to change the play I thought the audience would riot but then some bright fellow told them that Keane couldn't come because he'd broken his arm and they started writing letters to the newspapers wishing him a speedy recovery think about chemos though he couldn't stay away from the stage so he turned up right as rain the next night the crowd realising the injury was false started booing at him but he threw himself upon their mercy and charmed them over to his side by then he was earning over ten thousand pounds a year but it came at a cost he hurled himself into every performance with such all-consuming gusto that I once found him slumped in his dressing room after a performance throwing up blood I remember when he once drunkenly said he bought a yacht so he could sail to the stage door the bloody theaters miles away from the river alone the ocean and let's not forget the women Keane used halls the way you are I might take a glass of claret as a way to relax before during and after the show every show if it wasn't a [ __ ] it was some starstruck girl or our equally and fluctuated mother such was the power of Keynes acting that many women fell into a swoon during performances and had to be taken backstage to his dressing room to recover what Keane did to them to restore their wits I don't know but I do know that many feigned a fainting spell just to be taken backstage often there'd be a delay in a new act beginning just to allow for Keane to finish his topping he often has three women backstage for him to stroke during a performance to wait their turn outside his dressing room while the other is attended to within on several occasions I've seen women who are themselves do on stage waiting outside his door a recently asked him you know how the house was at a performance in Brighton good he replied but not as good as the [ __ ] I had there the man is a veritable RAM this doesn't come without its risks however and keen has been sorely afflicted by the pox not that this usually stops him he recently told me that his usual pre-act relaxation would have to be postponed because one of his buboes had burst and was causing him discomfort but that said he did not have me send away the young lady who was due to attend him at the end of the performance but perhaps his most infamous tryst was with the wife of a city alderman named of all things mr. Cox and his wife used to come and see Keene perform at Drury Lane and would often visit him backstage they even took to inviting him for supper at their home a recipe for disaster soon keen and Charlotte for that was her name were humping the mutton at every opportunity even in the private box her husband had secured for them at the theater he needs to joke in private that she was a lady at table and a harlot in bed now he thought this was some great romantic pairing that was somehow more noble than his usual diet of slatterns but I suspect Catherine just like the intrigue and possibly the quality of his performance anyway the two used to write passionate letters to one another expressing their desires in the most graphic terms so it was most unfortunate when the cuckolded mr. Cox found a bundle of them neatly tied up at his home he quite rightly flew into a rage of this diabolical betrayal by his wife and a man who had come to call his friend and immediately consulted his solicitor Anna taken a horsewhip to the pair of him but I'm not a gent Jane took securing a brace of pistols just in case Cox attacked him in the street and to add insult to injury was apparently told by his mistress that while she was enjoying his affections she'd also been reveling in the sensual activities of another fellow named a Whitmore I'm not sure what Cox this Whitmore chap but he went ahead and sued Cain in the public trial that followed just a few short months ago extracts from the intimate letters were read out which had the gallery in hysterics Keane began each one of them in a variety of endearing ways dearest of women my darling love my dearest love my beloved girl my darling little love my little darling love my dear madam My dear dear love my dear love my dear dear little love my dear little love my dearest dearest love my dearest Charlotte my beloved Charlotte my dear dear little girl my dearest dearest little love dear love and you impudent lying little [ __ ] it turns out that Keane used to call his mistress Little Britches on one newspaper claimed that when he grew jealous of her speaking to another man Kane sent to ruff [ __ ] he was using over to her house to abuse her although I think that's rubbish invented just to sell papers whatever the judge found in mr. Cox's favor and keen was ordered to pay him eight hundred pounds in damages oh and his wife left him the damage to Keynes public standing however is far greater the time said that his return to the stage was as great an outrage to decency as if he were to walk naked through the streets at midday and even his once adoring audience seems to have turned against him they started booing whenever he walks on stage now at one performance they started throwing fruit if someone brings a bag of potatoes he could be killed I think some of them just come to the theater now to shout obscenities at him it's no wonder reason his cups more often than not we're off to America soon for a second tour although the first time we went he nearly got chased out of Boston for refusing to go on stage because the audience wasn't big enough if he's not here in five minutes I'm bringing the curtain down what's that you say there are two empty bottles of claret outside the broom cupboard door and it sounds like someone's wrestling a petticoat factory inside don't worry I know where to find him Cain you you

Channel: Rogues Gallery Online

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Keywords: Rogues Gallery Online, rude history, History documentary, edmund kean actor, history for adults, history channel, history biography, history facts, fun history facts, best nsfw history facts, history facts not taught in school, history of the theatre, edmund kean, who was edmund kean, who is edmund kean, edmund kean shylock, edmund kean theatre, edmund kean as richard iii, edmund kean height, famous actors, famous hellraisers, drury lane theatre london, satire

Id: wyiH6CXmjvs

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020