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# System prepended metadata

title: Charles Kean
tags: [DramaSix, ' brokenOut', ' names']

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tags: DramaSix, names, brokenOut
title: Charles Kean
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### Charles Kean (1811-1868)
- Son of Edmund Kean
- Hired [Dion Boucicalt](/LlJRKRmeSdSHd8LXHxH4wA?edit) as house dramatist at the Princess's Theater in London.
- Directed [Dion Boucicalt's](/LlJRKRmeSdSHd8LXHxH4wA?edit) [The Corsican Brothers (1844)](/0NohGb4ATRy4vqfFvhbZDQ?both)
- Played both Fabien dei Franchi and Louis dei Franchi in first run of [The Corsican Brothers (1844)](/0NohGb4ATRy4vqfFvhbZDQ?both).
- Charles Kean took antiquarianism on stage to new heights in the 1850s, paying unparalleled attention to historical detail in sets, costumes and props. 
- Conflating antiquarian research with scenic spectacle, Kean treated Shakespeare’s chronicle plays as scenic illustrations of British national history.
- Kean’s productions treated history as a national heritage: a procession of civic cohesion and ceremonial pageantry.
- Shakespeare’s plays offered opportunities for resuscitating fanciful images of the past.
- What on the Elizabethan thrust stage had been a dramatization of moments in a troubled past that solicited audience assent by humanizing the characters and their stories, became a spectacular pageant of history in Kean’s productions, validated by an archeological reconstruction of environments and costumes from an idealized past