Background
In 1827, he was offered a cadetship in the East India Company's service, which he was prepared to accept if his father would settle an income of £400 on his mother.
In 1827, he was offered a cadetship in the East India Company's service, which he was prepared to accept if his father would settle an income of £400 on his mother.
Eton College.
After preparatory education at Worplesdon and at Greenford, near Harrow, he was sent to Eton College, where he remained three years. In January 1838, however, he returned to Drury Lane, and played Hamlet with a success which gave him a place among the principal tragedians of his time. Returning to England, he entered on a successful engagement at the Haymarket Theatre, and in 1850, with Robert Keeley, became lessee of the Princess's Theatre, London.
The most noteworthy feature of his management was a series of gorgeous Shakespearean revivals that aimed for "authenticity". Kean also mentored the young Ellen Terry in juvenile roles. Charles Kean was not a great tragic actor.
He did all that could be done by the persevering cultivation of his powers, and in many ways manifested the possession of high intelligence and refined taste, but his defects of person and voice made it impossible for him to give a representation at all adequate of the varying and subtle emotions of pure tragedy. But in melodramatic parts such as the king in Dion Boucicault's adaptation of Casimir Delavigne's Louis XI, and Louis and Fabian dei Franchi in Boucicault's adaptation of Dumas's The Corsican Brothers, his success was complete. In 1854 the writer Charles Reade created a play The Courier of Lyons for Kean to appear in, which became one of the most popular plays of the Victorian era.
From his "tour round the world" Kean returned in 1866 in broken health, and died in London on 22 January 1868 at the age of 57. He is buried at Horndean, Hampshire.
Married Ellen Tree, 1842.