Giles Playfair
The English 19th-century actor Edmund Kean, arguably the greatest interpreter of Shakespeare’s villains, was cited in a divorce case by a London alderman. A high moral fervour was whipped up, which led to mob protests during Kean’s performances in Drury Lane.
The Times was enraged when it learned that its victim intended to brave the storm of popular fury which it had been at such pains to create. “Mr Kean is not merely an adulterer,” it wrote in a leading article; “he is an adulterer anxious to show himself before the public with all the disgrace of the verdict of guilty about his neck, because that very disgrace is calculated to excite the sympathies of the profligate, and to fill the theatre with all that numerous class of morbidly curious idlers who flock to a play or an execution to see how a man looks when he is hanged, or deserves to be hanged . . . When every person who can read knows that his offence is aggravated by the most shocking circumstances of indecency, brutality, obscenity, perfidy, and hypocrisy – we do say that the public . . . ought not to be insulted by his immediate obtrusion before them, as a candidate for their applause. Let him hide himself for a reasonable time; his immediate appearance is as great an outrage to decency, as if he were to walk naked through the streets at mid-day.”
The results of this kind of publicity were inevitable. On the night of the 24th of January, Drury Lane was besieged by a seething, hysterical mass of humanity who, in truth, had the lust to view an execution, not the desire to see a play. Outside, the theatre was patrolled by a detachment of police from Bow Street, who had been given stern instructions by their chief that they were not to enter the building unless an actual riot broke out. Inside, the auditorium was jammed full half an hour before the curtain rose, and a kind of suppressed pandemonium had already been let loose. When Edmund made his entrance, a wild shout went up, like the battle-cry of some barbarian army on the march.
For three hours and more it continued unabated. But the curtain was not lowered. The show went on. Edmund and his fellow-actors played their parts, though scarcely a line that they uttered could be heard above the general din.
. . . When Edmund was on the stage neither his supporters nor his opponents let him alone for an instant. And when he was off, a series of side-shows took place. Private brawls broke out in the pit and in the boxes, hats were thrown in the air, dirty handkerchiefs were waved, missiles were hurled across the auditorium, and placards with lewd inscriptions were raised on high. Then Edmund re-entered and the persecution began.
He himself was apparently unmoved. He tried once or twice to address the house, but in vain. And so, heedless of the showers of orange peel which fell around him and the maniacal shouts which drowned his utterance, he played his part to the bitter end.
No one who saw him that night could have doubted his courage. Throughout a terrible ordeal he had not flinched. Perhaps the hostile newspapers which reported the proceedings the next morning with gleeful indignation, felt satisfied that the experience must have unnerved him and that he would not come back any more. But they were wrong. On the 28th of January The Times was forced to announce: “That obscene little personage (Mr Kean) is, we see, to make another appearance this evening . . . His real friends and supporters, who have hitherto upheld him, because they thought his frailties overbalanced by his talents, must now desert him, when they see him dead even to the lowest degree of shame which distinguishes human from animal nature. We suspect that he will scarcely find adequate consolation among his ‘Wolves’ (a club of Kean’s admirers) and – we need not add the alliterative adjunct.”
He appeared as Othello; and he had to contend with another prolonged exhibition of mass hysteria which was no less humiliating than the one which he had already suffered. In fact, Othello gave his audience an even better chance for coarse enjoyment at his expense than Richard II had done. Many of the lines which he was obliged to speak were greedily interpreted as references to his own morals. And, of course, during the scenes with Desdemona there were shrieks of disgusted delight.
. . . (At the end of the play) Edmund was received with mingled cheers and hisses, but this time he was allowed to speak. He addressed the house briefly and under stress of obvious emotion. He disclaimed any intention of justifying his private conduct, though he suggested that he had been victimised. “I stand before you,” he said, “as the representative of Shakespeare’s heroes . . . If this is the work of a hostile press, I shall endeavour with firmness to withstand it; but if it proceeds from your verdict and decision, I will at once bow to it, and shall retire with deep regret and with a grateful sense of all the favours which your patronage has hitherto conferred on me.”
After that speech the issue was really settled. In spite of the frantic efforts of his enemies, Edmund had neither retreated nor begged for mercy. The odds had appeared to be overwhelmingly against him, but heroically he had refused to yield, and it was obvious that now he would never do so.