Page:Richard III (1927) Yale.djvu/196

182 October 31, 1800, at Covent Garden in the character. When Kemble played in the company with Cooke, the rôle of Richmond was assigned to Kemble. Cooke was the first actor of prominence to play Richard in America. He chose for his début on the American stage the tragedy of Richard III, opening in New York on Nov. 21, 1810. He was greatly admired in America, although Lamb has described his Richard as a "butcher-like representation."

In 1805 the "infant Roscius," William Betty, then fourteen years of age and described by his contemporaries as "the tenth wonder of the world," played Richard. Lord Byron had an unfavorable opinion of Master Betty, which he expressed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

To Kemble we owe the inauguration of elaborate scenery and the first attempts at accuracy in historical costume in Richard III, but the version of Cibber continued to be the text, although Kemble shortened somewhat the Cibber play.

Edmund Kean (1787-1833) attained the greatest fame of any actor of the nineteenth century in Richard. He played it for the first time in London at Drury Lane in 1814, his conception of the character modelled upon the interpretation of George Frederick Cooke, but in reality Kean was so unlike Cooke physically, being small and energetic, that there was little resemblance between the two interpretations. Lord Byron was one of Kean's enthusiastic admirers, as was the poet Keats. It was of Kean's Richard that Coleridge said it was like "reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." Kean was a continuer of the Garrick, instead of the Kemble, tradition, to which he added his own peculiar fire and vivacity. As J. P. Kemble pointed out, if one liked the style of Kean, one would not like the style of Kemble. There is, however, no question of the greater popularity of the style of