The Astonishing Ira Aldridge — Stephen Legawiec

This blog is mostly about my personal experiences in the theatre, but it’s always a good day when you get to talk about Ira Aldridge.

Ira Aldridge, a Black American, was one the greatest and most celebrated Shakespearean actors of the 19th Century. In a career that spanned five decades, he played the great Shakespearean roles and was decorated multiple times by the crowned heads of Europe.

I confess that I didn’t know that much about Aldridge until I began doing research for the Othello that I directed. There are a handful of names you always hear in connection with 19th Century Shakespeare: Booth, Keane, Henry Irving. But not Ira Aldridge. Perhaps as he becomes more well known, that will be corrected - for he was as great, if not greater than all of them. Aldridge had an astonishing life, not only as an actor, but as a theatrical innovator and an activist.

Ira Aldridge was born in New York in 1807 (at the peak of the slave trade). At the age of 13, he attended the African Free School in New York City. This school was for children of slaves and free people of color and its founding members included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. Aldridge received a classical education at the school and he got his start in acting at the African Grove Theatre.

The story of the African Grove Theatre is really remarkable.

William Brown was a retired ship’s steward from the West Indies who moved to the USA and settled in a New York neighborhood of free Blacks. Eventually, Brown hosted get-togethers in his back yard, featuring poetry, skits and music. His backyard entertainment consisted of actors and singers of color performing for the Black community. James Hewlett, a regular customer and entertainer, suggested that he and Brown hire additional Black actors and create a theater troop. This was the African Grove Theatre.

Playbill for James Hewlett in a performance of Richard III

In 1821, Brown acquired a 300-seat indoor space on Mercer and Bleecker Street and he renamed his theatre The African Company. It was here that Aldridge practiced and honed his craft as a teenager. Fully 42 years before the Emancipation Proclamation, The African Company was the first resident African American theatre in the United States. Brown is considered the first Black American playwright, while Hewlett is regarded as the first Black Shakespearean actor.

The African Company lasted only three years and disbanded after their building was burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances in 1823.

Aldridge perceived that he could not make a go of it as an actor in America and so he left for the United Kingdom, which was more hospitable to Blacks. He was 17 at the time.

After studying briefly at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, Aldridge began performing in the English provinces. He first played Black-only characters, but then he moved on to a variety of Shakespearean roles.

Aldridge as Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus

A real-life tragedy ultimately became a turning point in Aldridge’s career.

In 1833, Edmund Kean, the preeminent British Shakespearean of his day, was playing Othello at the Covent Garden in London. One night during a performance he collapsed on stage and could not finish the run. (Kean died eight weeks later.) Aldridge, who had played the role in the provinces, was asked to replace him. Doing this, Aldridge became the first Black actor to play Othello on the London Stage. From here on, his career was made.

Aldridge was a genius at self promotion. When The Times referred to him has the “African Roscius” (after the famed Roman actor), he assumed an African lineage. He claimed to be descended from West African Kings, which added to his mystique. He also changed his middle name to Keene, a popular practice of actors, which signified that his acting was “in the style of” the great Edmund Kean.

Aldridge as Othello, early in his career

An innovation that Aldridge introduced early in his career was a direct address to the audience on the closing night of his engagement at a given theatre. In the years leading up to the emancipation of all slaves in the British colonies in 1832, he would come on stage after the curtain call and speak to the audience as himself. The lines below are an excerpt from his quite longer speech (all in iambic pentameter) on the injustice of slavery:

Through deserts wide the Negro strays alone
In happy innocence, untaught, unknown…
But soon the white man comes, allured by gain –
O’er his free limbs flings slavery’s galling chain
Transforms him to a brute.

Portrait_of_Ira_Aldridge,_by_Taras_Shevchenko_(1858).jpg

In 1852 Aldridge started touring continental Europe. He was a sensation, performing in Russia, Hungary, and Prussia, Austria and Switzerland, among other countries. He performed Othello, Macbeth, Lear, and Shylock, among other roles.

Aldridge as Shylock1858.jpg — Aldridge as Shylock

Aldridge received awards for his art from European heads of state and governments: the Prussian Gold Medal for Arts and Sciences from King Frederick William III, the Golden Cross of Leopold from the Czar of Russia, and the Maltese Cross from Bern, Switzerland.

He performed Othello in Russia and was lionized, earning more money than any Russian actor. One Russian critic said that the evenings on which he saw Aldridge's Othello, Lear, Shylock and Macbeth “were undoubtedly the best I have ever spent in the theatre.” “After Aldridge,” wrote another, “it is impossible to see Othello performed by a white actor, even Garrick himself.”

Aldridge wedded a white Englishwoman, Margaret Gill, and they were married for 40 years until her death in 1864. Two of Aldridge’s daughters, Luranah and Amanda, became opera singers. (Luranah Aldridge is pictured above.) Amanda Aldridge was also a voice teacher and taught the great American actor Paul Robeson.

Aldridge was planning a 100-show tour of the post Civil War US, but he died in Poland in 1867 before this could happen.

Aldridge is the only African American to have a bronze plaque among the 33 actors honored at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon.