d Sir
Toby, were his contemporaries most famous in their day.

[Page Heading: Kemble and Kean]

Garrick's place at the head of the English stage was taken by John
Philip Kemble (1757-1823), an actor of great dignity of presence and
manner, who won general admiration in the great tragic parts, especially
those offering opportunities for declamation. His sister, Mrs. Sarah
Siddons, was doubtless the greatest of English actresses; her Lady
Macbeth, Queen Katherine, and Constance overwhelmed her audiences by
their majesty and passion. Kemble's reputation was surpassed by Edmund
Kean, whose appearance as Shylock in 1819, at Drury Lane, was the first
of a series of great successes in most of the tragic parts, including
Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Richard III. In contrast to Kemble's
declamation, Kean's acting was vehement and passionate. Coleridge
declared that to see him was "reading Shakespeare by flashes of
lightning." Readers of the dramatic criticism of Hazlitt and Lamb will
recall tributes to Kean and to other favorite actors, especially perhaps
their praise of Mrs. Jordan's Viola and Rosalind. Macready for forty
years maintained the great traditions of English acting, and during his
managements of Drury Lane sought to retain for Shakespeare's plays their
preeminence on the stage. Associated with his many impersonations were
those of Mrs. Warner and Helen Faucit (Lady Martin). From Garrick's
debut to the retirement of Macready (1851) is a century of great actors
and actresses who brought to the interpretation of the many characters
of the plays a skill and intelligence that satisfied the most critical
theater-goers and extended vastly the appreciation and knowledge of
Shakespeare's men and women.

Shakespeare's position on the stage was, however, maintained only with
difficulty against the melodramas, musical farces, and spectacles that
absorbed the theaters. Yet from 1844 to 1862, Samuel Phelps, at Sadler's
Wells, presented thirty-one of the plays. Since then the stage has
hardly seen an equally important revival; but the great traditions of
acting have been carried on by many eminent actors: Sir Henry Irving,
Ellen Terry, Forbes Robertson, in England; Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth,
Junius Brutus Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Ada Rehan, Julia Marlowe, and
Edward Sothern in America. Lately, successful attempts have been made to
perform plays in the Elizabethan manner, and perhaps there is a tendency
to pay less attention to