Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Places are secured at Drury Lane for Saturday, but so great is the rage for seeing Keen [sic] that only a
3d & 4th row could be got. As it is in a front box however, I hope we shall do pretty well ... There are no
good Places to be got in Drury Lane for the next fortnight, but Henry means to secure some for Saturday
fortnight when You are reckoned upon.
Statue of Edmund Kean in the lobby of Drury Lane Theatre.
In her next letter she reports:
We were quite satisfied with Kean. I cannot imagine better acting, but the part was too short, & excepting
him & Miss Smith, & she did not quite answer my expectation, the parts were ill filled & the Play heavy.
We were too much tired to stay for the whole of Illusion (Nourjahad) which has 3 acts; there is a great
deal of finery & dancing in it, but I think little merit ... I shall like to see Kean again excessively, & to
see him with You too; it appeared to me as if there were no fault in him anywhere; & in his scene with
Tubal there was exquisite acting.
The view of Lincoln's Inn Fields from the north-west in 1810.
The next day they returned and an acquaintance was urging them to go again the day after
that. But Jane was coming down with a cold and the performance of Miss Stephens gave
her, 'little pleasure either in acting or singing.'
According to
The Picture of London
, boxes cost six shillings; seats in the pit were three
shillings and sixpence; the gallery, two shillings; and the upper gallery, one shilling.
Continue along Russell Street into Kemble Street, a nineteenth-century road driven
through a tangle of older thoroughfares, to reach Kingsway, which, with Aldwych to the
south, was opened in 1905 to reduce the traffic congestion in the area. In the process a maze
of ancient streets was swept away.
