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Fanny Kemble: Shakespeare Company
built 616 days ago
Kemble set foot on American shores in 1832 to much fanfare. Kemble, an untrained actress, had acting in her genes -- having been born into the Siddons family, which included the famous actress Sarah Siddons. One of her specialties would become interpretations of Shakespeare's plays. Her acting prowess allowed her to summon the snarl of Caliban and the tenderness of Miranda in equal measure.
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Fanny Kemble was more than the toast of the town, she was the most glamorous woman in the English speaking world. But far beyond that, she was a famous author, Shakespearean scholar, and had a major influence on the Civil War.
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Kemble's view of the act of reading involves a complex relationship between emotional participation and dramatic performance. In a sonnet "To Shakespeare," she offers the striking image of Shakespeare himself eavesdropping on Kemble's "rehearsal" of his text in what seems to be a private setting. "Oft, when my lips I open to rehearse," Kemble writes,
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In telling Kemble's tale, Ventfort Hall and Shakespeare & Company posit the drama amid one of the darkest moments in the nation’s history -- the era of slavery. Portrayed by actress Elizabeth Raetz and directed by Andrew Borthwick-Leslie, the one-woman show is designed as a portal into the heart and psyche of a hugely popular actress who was thrown into the maelstrom of the slavery issue -- an issue which would define her as a fervent abolitionist. That same abolitionism would later end her marriage.
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Adjacent to the graveyard was the town’s meetinghouse, now known as the Church on the Hill, where Kemble scheduled one of her popular Shakespearean recitations, eager to repay the generous welcome afforded her by Lenoxians. She wanted the proceeds used for the benefit of the town’s poor. “Dear,” came the reply,“but there are no poor in Lenox.”
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