American actor, born at Philadelphia, PA, on the 28th of March 1829, of German parents, his father being a merchant. He graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1847, taking the B.A. degree, and subsequently that of M.A. He was intended for the legal profession, but, going to England, and having a passion for the stage, he secured, through Charles Kean, an engagement at the Theatre Royal, York, and made his début at the Princess’s Theatre in London under the management of Charles Kean. He visited America in 1857, and returning to England, after fulfilling engagements in the provinces, he appeared in London as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Shylock, King John and Louis XI., and under Mr. Phelps’s management of Sadler’s Wells Theatre in 1860 he appeared as Orlando, Marc Antony, Romeo and Cassio. Four years later, Messrs. Phelps and Vezin produced Westland Marston’s Donna Diana at the Princess’s, and in 1870 the latter alternated Iago and Othello with the former, while in 1873 both played with Toole and Mathews at the Gaiety. In 1876 Mr. Vezin played Macbeth at Drury Lane for the benefit of the Philadelphia Centennial, and in the same year he made his first appearance at the Haymarket in W. S. Gilbert’s Dan’l Druce, acting the title rôle 106 successive times. He created the character of De Taldé in an English adaptation of the Dancicheffs, and Dr. Primrose in W. G. Will’s Olivia, founded on the Vicar of Wakefield.
