"Mislike me not for my complexion…": Ira Aldridge in whiteface

African American Review, Summer, 1999 by Bernth Lindfors

Ira Aldridge, the first important black American Shakespearean actor, had an odd but remarkable theatrical career. Born in New York City in 1807, educated for a few years in the second African Free School in lower Manhattan, employed in his youth at various menial jobs in the city, including a brief stint as a costume carrier for a visiting British actor, and then involved in several small dramatic productions put on by ragtag black acting companies at a short-lived establishment called the African Theatre, Aldridge fell in love with the stage and aspired to become a professional actor. Since he could not fulfil this ambition in the United States, which had proven "not yet ready to accept black actors in the legitimate drama" (Hill 17), he emigrated to the British Isles, where he was fortunate enough to secure his first engagement with top billing at London's Royal Coburg Theatre (now the Old Vic) in October 1825, when he was only eighteen years old.

In those days it was customary to hail a talented young performer as a "Roscius," a name alluding to the great Roman actor Quintus Roscius Gallus. Garrick had been the first "English Roscius." Next came Mr. Betty, the phenomenally successful juvenile thespian who was heralded as the "Young Roscius," and thereafter the name was linked to theatrical precocity. Master Grossmith, a seven-year-old, was introduced on the stage as the "Celebrated Infant Roscius," and Miss Lee Sugg, another child prodigy, as the "Young Roscia." Inevitably, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and several American Roscii and Rosciae, including a Kentucky Roscius, soon appeared. Since Aldridge was both young and black, he was quickly dubbed the "African Roscius," an honorific title given extra resonance when theater managers began to spread the word that he was the son of a Christian Fulani prince from Senegal. Aldridge, whose staple role was Shakespeare's Othello, could be said to have made a career out of playing a Moor playing a Moor. This may have been an adroit theatrical strategy, given the obstacles a black neophyte would have had to overcome to be accepted as a legitimate player on a foreign stage.

But at the outset this was not an easy way to make a living. Though he could depend on his novelty value to draw people to the theater, there were only a limited number of roles a black performer could take on, and in the first half of the nineteenth century the normal practice in British theaters was to perform at least two plays each night and to change the bill every day. Long runs of a single play were not common until later in the century, and then only in London. For Aldridge to be employable, he had to be able to offer a reasonable number of well-known roles and to keep moving from place to place. He could not find a permanent position in one of the London theaters, nor could he secure engagements outside London for more than a week or two at a time. So he turned into a perpetually touring player, an exotic "star" who made his rounds principally in the provinces week after week, month after month, year after year after year.

But first he had to establish a reputation as a performer. Being an "African" was not enough; he also had to prove his credentials as a "Roscius." One way he did this was to draw upon anti-slavery sentiments by playing long-suffering slaves in abolitionist melodramas set in the New World. Gambia in Thomas Morton's The Slave, Oroonoko in stage adaptations of Aphra Behn's eponymous novel, and Christophe in J. H. Amherst's The Death of Christophe, King of Hayti were the principal tragic roles he assumed early in his career to supplement his performances of Othello. He also played dark strangers, some of whom were villains: Zanga the Moor in Edward Young's The Revenge, Rolla the heroic Peruvian army commander in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro, and Hassan the vengeful Moor in Monk Lewis's gothic thriller The Castle Spectre. These "heavy" roles helped to establish his competence as a tragedian.

To balance the heaviness, Aldridge made a point of performing a light role in the afterpiece, the short farce that followed the main offering of the evening. In this part of the bill his favorite character was Mungo, a cheeky, drunken servant in Isaac Bickerstaff's The Padlock, which many critics considered his best role, even better than his Othello (Lindfors). He developed the habit of playing both Othello and Mungo on the first evening of a provincial engagement, thereby impressing his audience with his versatility as an artist. Some spectators came to the theater anticipating that the spectacle of an African doing Shakespeare would be amusing in itself - a black burlesque of the Bard. What they found was something entirely different - a noble, dignified, and very moving performance of a great tragic role. Aldridge then turned the tables on them again by coming out in the afterpiece as the kind of black man they had expected to see in Othello - a humorous buffoon singing, dancing, and speaking in black dialect who was not in full command of his senses or his statements. Mungo was a hilarious comic caricature, almost a prototype of the blackface minstrel. The double surprise never failed to win Aldridge additional applause. Some provincial newspapers called him the most talented actor of both tragedy and comedy that they had ever seen.