"Shylock or nothing!" In that part there was scope for his intellectual energy, opportunity to give those magical shades of intensity and throw into those dark, acute features the infinite power of expression for which he was distinguished. A few weeks before that memorable evening, his first-born son had died in a provincial town, and in all the agony of his bereavement he had been obliged to act, to gain money to defray the funeral expenses. Thence he had gone up to town, and, owing to a misunderstanding of the contract, for months endured the pressure of actual want and the heart-sickness of hope deferred. The season was unpropitious, his spirits and energy were depressed by fasting, affliction, and neglect. While he was at rehearsal, his wife sold one of her few remaining articles of apparel to obtain him a dinner, fortified by which he trudged through the snow to the theatre. The series of triumphs succeeding this memorable night are well known. The overpowering reality of his personation gave Lord Byron a convulsive fit, caused an actress to faint on the stage, and an old comedian to weep, replenished the treasury of Drury Lane, electrified the United Kingdom, ushered in a new theatrical era, and crowned him with sudden prosperity and fame. His star, however, set in clouds; his last appearance in Lon- don was as melancholy as his first was brilliant; alienated from his family, the victim of excess—proud, sensitive, and turbulent—his domestic troubles were only reconciled just before his death, which came as a relief to himself and those with whom he was connected.
While the histrionic achievements of Kean identify his name with the progress of dramatic art, his actual life and habits pertain rather to a sphere without the limits of civilization. A wild vein belonged to his very nature, and seemed indicative of gipsy or savage blood. It gleamed sometimes from his extraordinary eyes, when acting, so as to appal, startle, and impress every class of observers. A man once cried out in the pit at the demoniacal glare of his optics, as Shylock meditating revenge on his creditor, "It is the devil!" His poet-biographer compares him to the van-winged hero of Paradise Lost; and West, the painter, declared he had never been so haunted by the look of a human face as by that of Kean. Something of this peculiar trait also exhibited itself in his action and tones,
