Ira Aldridge

Ira Aldridge
Portrait of Aldridge by James Northcote
Born	(1807-07-24)24 July 1807 New York City
Died	7 August 1867(1867-08-07) (aged 60) Łódź, Congress Poland
Years active	early 1820s–1862
Spouse(s)	Margaret Gill, Amanda von Brandt

Ira Frederick Aldridge (July 24, 1807 – August 7, 1867) was an American and later British stage actor who made his career largely on the London stage and in Europe, especially in Shakespearean roles. He is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage honored with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. He was especially popular in Prussia and Russia, where he received top honors from heads of state.

Early life and career

Aldridge was born in New York City to Reverend Daniel and Luranah Aldridge July 24, 1807. At age 13, Aldridge went to the African Free School in New York City, established by the New York Manumission Society for the children of free blacks and slaves. They were given a classical education, with the study of English grammar, writing, mathematics, geography, and astronomy. His early exposure to theater included viewing plays from the high balcony of the Park Theatre, New York's leading theater of the time.

Aldridge's first professional acting experience was in the early 1820s with the African Company, a group founded and managed by William Henry Brown and James Hewlett. In 1821, the group built the African Grove Theatre, the first resident African American theatre in the United States.

Ira made his acting debut as Rolla, a Peruvian character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro. He may have also played the male lead in Romeo and Juliet, as reported later in an 1860 memoir by his schoolfellow, Dr. James McCune Smith.

Confronted with persistent discrimination, which black actors endured in the United States, Aldridge emigrated to Liverpool, England in 1824 with actor James Wallack. During this time the industrial revolution had begun, bringing about radical economic change that helped expand the development of theatres. The British Parliament had already outlawed the slave trade and was confronted with the prospect of abolishing slavery itself in the British colonies, which increased the prospect of black actors being able to perform.

Ira Aldridge as Mungo in The Padlock

Having limited onstage experience and lacking name recognition, he concocted a story of his African lineage, claiming to have descended from the Fulani princely line. By 1831 he had taken the name of Keene, a homonym for the then popular British actor, Edmund Kean. Aldridge observed a common theatrical practice of assuming an identical or similar nomenclature to that of a celebrity in order to garner attention. In addition to being called F.W. Keene Aldridge, he later would be called African Roscius, after the famous Roman actor of the first century BC.

On October 10, 1825, Aldridge made his European debut, making him the first African American actor to establish himself professionally in a foreign country at London's Royal Coburg Theatre in the lead role of Oroonoko in The Revolt of Surinam, or A Slave's Revenge; this play was an adaptation of Thomas Southerne's Oroonoko.

According to the scholar Shane White, English people had heard of the African Theatre because of British actor and comedian Charles Mathews, so Aldridge associated himself with that. Bernth Lindfors says:

[W]hen Aldridge starts appearing on the stage at the Royalty Theatre, he's just called a gentleman of color. But when he moves over to the Royal Coburg, he's advertised in the first playbill as the American Tragedian from the African Theater New York City. The second playbill refers to him as 'The African Tragedian.' So everybody goes to the theater expecting to laugh because this is the man they think Mathews saw in New York City.

An innovation he introduced early in his career was a direct address to the audience on the closing night of his engagement at a given theatre. Especially in the years leading up to the emancipation of all slaves in the British colonies he would speak of the injustice of slavery and the passionate desire for freedom of those held in bondage.

Critique

Aldridge as Aaron in Titus Andronicus

During Aldridge's seven-week engagement at the Royal Coburg, the young actor starred in five plays and he earned admiration from his audiences while most critics emphasized Aldridge's lack of stage training and experience. According to modern critics Errol Hill and James Vernon Hatch, early reviews were mixed. For The Times he was "baker-kneed and narrow-chested with lips so shaped that it is utterly impossible for him to pronounce English"; the Globe found his conception of Oroonoko to be very judicious and his enunciation distinct and sonorous; and The Drama described him as "tall and tolerably well proportioned with a weak voice that gabbles apace."

Aldridge performed scenes from Othello that impressed reviewers. One critic wrote, "In Othello (Aldridge) delivers the most difficult passages with a degree of correctness that surprises the beholder." He gradually progressed to larger roles; by 1825, he had top billing at London's Coburg Theatre as Oronoko in A Slave's Revenge, soon to be followed by the role of Gambia in The Slave, and the title role of Shakespeare's Othello. He also played major roles in plays such as The Castle Spectre and The Padlock. In search of new and suitable material, he also appeared occasionally as white European characters, for which he would be appropriately made up with greasepaint and wig. Examples of these are Captain Dirk Hatteraick and Bertram in Rev. R. C. Maturin's Bertram, the title role in Shakespeare's Richard III, and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.

Touring and later years

Aldridge as Othello by William Mulready, Walters Art Museum

In 1831 Aldridge successfully played in Dublin; several locations in southern Ireland, where he created a sensation in the small towns; as well as in Bath and Edinburgh. The actor Edmund Kean praised his Othello; some took him to task for taking liberties with the text, while others attacked his race. Since he was an American black actor from the African Theater, The Times called him the "African Roscius", after the famed actor of ancient Rome. Aldridge used this to his benefit and expanded African references in his biography that appeared in playbills.

Aldridge first toured to continental Europe in 1852, with successes in Germany, where he was presented to the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, performed for Frederick William IV of Prussia, and performed in Budapest. An 1858 tour took him to Serbia and to Imperial Russia, where he became acquainted with Count Fyodor Tolstoy, Mikhail Shchepkin and the Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko, who did his portrait in pastel.

Now of an appropriate age, about this time, he played the title role of King Lear (in England) for the first time. He purchased some property in England, toured Russia again (1862), and applied for British citizenship (1863).

Marriage and family

Portrait in pastel, by Taras Shevchenko, 1858

Soon after going to England, in 1824 Aldridge married Margaret Gill, an English woman. They were married for 40 years until her death in 1864.

A year after Margaret's death, on April 20, 1865, Aldridge married his mistress, the self-styled Swedish countess Amanda von Brandt, with whom he already had a son, Ira Daniel. They had four more children: Irene Luranah, Ira Frederick and Amanda Aldridge, who all went on to musical careers, the two girls as opera singers. Their daughter Rachael Frederica was born shortly after Aldridge's death and died in infancy.

Aldridge spent most of his final years with his family in Russia and continental Europe, interspersed with occasional visits to England. He planned to return to the post-Civil-War United States, but he died in August 1867 while visiting Łódź, Poland.

His remains were buried in the city's Evangelical Cemetery; 23 years passed before a proper tombstone was erected. His grave is tended by the Society of Polish Artists of Film and Theatre.

A half-length portrait of 1826 by James Northcote of Aldridge dressed for the role of Othello, but in a relatively undramatic portrait pose, is on display at the Manchester Art Gallery (in the Manchester section); Aldridge performed in the city many times. A blue plaque unveiled in 2007 commemorates Aldridge at 5 Hamlet Road in Upper Norwood, London. The plaque describes him as the 'African Roscius'.

The Ira Aldridge Troupe

As Othello in Poland, 1860

Aldridge's tomb in Poland

Aldridge enjoyed enormous fame as a tragic actor during his lifetime, but after his death, he was soon forgotten [in Europe]. The news of Ira Aldridge's death in Poland and the record of his achievement as an actor reached the American black community slowly. In African American circles, Aldridge was a legendary figure. Many black actors viewed him as an inspirational model, so when his death was revealed several amateur groups sought to honor his memory by adopting his name for their companies.

There were many troupes that were rising in various places around America. In the late nineteenth century Aldridge-titled troupes existed in Washington, DC, in Philadelphia, and in New Haven, their respective productions at the time being an adaptation of Kotzebue's Die Spanier in Peru by Sheridan as Pizarro in 1883, School by Thomas William Robertson in 1885, and George Melville Baker's Comrades in 1889. However the most prominent Aldridge-titled troupe that was created was the Ira Aldridge Troupe in 1863, some 35 years after Aldridge left for good from the [U.S].

The Ira Aldridge Troupe was a minstrelsy group that caricatured Irish white men. The Ira Aldridge Troupe is surely unique in annals of minstrelsy, if only by virtue of its name, which reflects the pride and awareness the founders of the company must have had when they chose to title themselves after the Black actor who had left his homeland some 35 years before, and never returning. Unlike most, later, Black minstrel companies, the Aldridge Troupe apparently did not do plantation material, although they were billed as a contraband troupe—that is fugitive slaves. Perhaps, too, because of their substantially Black audience, the troupe felt no need to "put on the mask." In fact, although much of the material the group performed was standard fare, several of the company's acts were downright subversive.

The Ira Aldridge Troupe appearing during the war made it "unique in the annals of minstrelsy," first because the Clipper thought it was important enough to review; second, because it occurred before a mixed audience; and third, because a black troupe presented a program designed to appeal to their black audience. The Ira Aldridge Troupe performances eschewed the southern genre of old "darkies" longing for the plantation. The exclusion of southern nostalgia may have been in deference to a majority black audience, whom the New York Clipper reported as "A more incorrigible set of cusses we never saw; they beat our Bowery gods all to pieces."

In addition, the troupe also created performances and songs that referred to the Civil War. There was a famous ballad called, "When the Cruel War is Over", that was performed by three members of the troupe—Miss S. Burton, Miss R. Clark, and Mr. C. Nixon. The song sold over a million copies of sheet music and was one of the most popular sentimental songs of the Civil War. The song describes a soldier's farewell to his lady, the wounds he receives in battle, and his dying request for a last caress. The song, so popular with white minstrel groups, was an example of the change in white minstrelsy that had been occurring at this time.)

Another performance that was popular was a farce called The Irishman and the Stranger, with a Mr. Brown playing a character called Pat O'Callahan and a Mr. Jones playing the Stranger. This farce displayed black actors in white face speaking in a "nigger accent". The Clipper reporter referred to the performance as a "truly laughable affair, the 'Irish nagur' mixing up a rich Irish brogue promiscuously with the sweet nigger accent". Perhaps the Aldridge Troupe's audience got its biggest satisfaction, however, from the role reversal inherent in the piece: Since the beginning of minstrelsy, minstrels of Irish heritage such as Dan Bryant and Richard Hooley had been caricaturing Black men—now it was the turn of Black men to caricature the Irish.

The history of minstrelsy is also the history of the piracy and distortion of Black culture by whites. The Ira Aldridge Troupe attempted to pirate that piracy, and, in collaboration with its audience, turn minstrelsy to its own ends.

Children

• Ira Daniel Aldridge, 1847–?. Teacher. Migrated to Australia in 1867.
• Irene Luranah Pauline Aldridge, 1860–1932. Opera singer.
• Ira Frederick Olaff Aldridge, 1862–?. Musician and composer.
• Amanda Christina Elizabeth Aldridge (Amanda Ira Aldridge), 1866–1956. Opera singer, teacher and composer under name of Montague Ring.
• Rachael Margaret Frederika Aldridge, 1867, died in infancy.

Legacy and honors

• He 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.
• 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.
• Aldridge's legacy was an inspiration behind the dramatic writing of African American playwright Henry Francis Downing, who in the early twentieth century became "probably the first person of African descent to have a play of his or her own written and published in Britain."
• In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Ira Aldridge in his 100 Greatest African Americans.
• His life was the subject of a play, Red Velvet, by Lolita Chakrabarti and starring Adrian Lester, at the Tricycle Theatre in 2012.
• Howard University Department of Theatre Arts has a theater named after Ira Aldridge.

Further reading

• Ira Aldridge 1807–1867. The Great Shakespearean Tragedian on the Bicentennial Anniversary of His Birth, Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney and Maria Lukowska (eds). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009
• Krystyna Kujawinska Courtney, Ira Aldridge (1807–1867) (Dzieje pierwszego czarnoskorego tragika szekspirowskiego), Kraków: Universitas, 2009
• Bernth Lindfors, "Aldridge in Europe", Shakespeare in American Life, Folger Shakespeare Library's public radio documentary
• Herbert Marshall, Further Research on Ira Aldridge, the Negro Tragedian, FRSA, Center for Soviet & East European Studies, Southern Illinois University
• Herbert Marshall Collection of Ira Aldridge, Collection 139, Southern Illinois University Special Research Collection: Theatre, material which Marshall collected for his biography of Aldridge
• Rzepka, Charles. Introduction: "Obi, Aldridge and Abolition", Romantic Circles Praxis Series.
• Shane White, "Shutting Down the Grove Theatre", Shakespeare in American Life, Folger Shakespeare Library's public radio documentary
• The Black Doctor, Black Drama Database, subscription only

External links

• Ira Aldridge: The African Roscius, ed. Bernth Lindfors, University of Rochester Press, Rochester, New York, 2007
• "Aldridge Collection" finding aid for Northwestern University Special Collections' Aldridge family archival collection
• George F. Bragg, "Biography of Ira Aldridge", Men of Maryland