Cymbeline - eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

55.
CHAPTER FOUR; VARIOUS PEiiFORHLRS , 1822-1B29.
I. Kean. and Young as Post humus and lachimQ; Drury Lane
January-June, 1823.
The 4°int engagement of Edmund Kean and Charles Kayne
Young at Prury Lane in 1822-1823 vas a case of one manager
profiting by the mistake of another. Charles Kemble at
Covent Garden had offered to renew Young's engagement on
unacceptable terras: Young was offered a cut from £25 to
£20 a week, and a reduction from three months' vacation to
two; (ae vacations allowed actors to make money touring in
the provinces, such a reduction was a serious depletion of
Young's income). Llliston at Drury Lane offered Young £50
a night to act in a succession of parts opposite Kean -
effectively an offer of £150 a week. The offer included
nine months at this rate, three months' leave for country
engagements* and a "clear benefit" (i.e. a benefit at which
no "house charges" - the cost of running the theatre for one
night - were paid by the actor). 1
The allocation of parts varied: in some plays, notably
Othello, the actors alternated the main male parts; in
others they tool the parts which they had previously played.
In Cyinbeline , Young had been established in the rSle of
lachimo since 1812, when he played it to Kemble's Posthumus.
Kean had not appeared in London in either part. Prom such
casting alone it is evident that Kean's Posthumus would
stress the passionate aspects of the character, and that
Young's lachimo would be a stately villain: Julian Charles
Young, who saw his father in every role of the season,
summarized thus the physical differences between his style
of acting and that of Kean:
had certain physical requisites which
especially qualified him for his vocation.
Young had a small, keen, brown, penetrating
eye, overshadowed by a strongly-defined and