Abstract
In effort to rehabilitate Edmund Kean, many biographers prefer to dwell on episodes that would melt even the hardest of hearts. In a scene reminiscent of Hamlet, Kean and his friend enter into a graveyard: one summer night, when all tumult was hushed and the world was calm, Kean and his friend set out for this city of the dead lying peaceful beneath the pale light of moon and stars. Kean's graveside visit becomes a kind of theater, the public outpouring of tears that have welled in him since Howard's death, which, in turn, becomes a final rehearsal of sorts for the actor's Drury Lane performances of the melancholy Dane. Kean's fictions work to rehabilitate Kean; by transferring our records of Kean from the actor to these fictions, Kean moves from the transitory to the archetypal. Ironically, had Kean been a giving, loving person, a man with integrity, it's doubtful he would have made this leap into literature.