ABSTRACT
According to Jean-Paul Sartre's narrative, when the actor Frederick Lemaitre played Edmund Kean in Dumas' play, he identified so fully with the character that his "real" self disappeared. Although Sartre's Kean is more a "man of theater" than any Kean before him, of all the keans created since the original's demise, Sartre's is the least historically authentic. Though of the aristocratic Kemble school, Derek Jacobi was perfectly cast for Sartre's Kean, at least according to the needs of director Sam Mendes, who knew exactly what he wanted from Jacobi, and what he didn't want from the play. Depending on the depth of Anthony Hopkins' knowledge of the subject, he may well have found other remarkable affinities with Kean's personality and even physique. Peter O'Toole collects Kean memorabilia, a ring, and repeats stories with the gentle madness of a trainspotter—those weirdos who hang around British railway stations, recording, for fun, the serial numbers of trains.
