July 17, 2021 • 26 mins
This 2017 episode covers one of the first Americans to achieve fame as a Shakespearean actor, and the first black man to do so, becoming a famous figure on the Victorian stage. But Aldridge has largely been excluded from biographies of Shakespearean actors.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello and Happy Saturday. Shakespearean actor Irah Frederick Aldridge came
up a couple of times in our recent episode on
our Turo Alfonso Schaumberg. As I was writing that episode,
I thought our episode on I Frederick Aldridge is so recent,
everyone will surely remember it. Uh turns out though that
(00:25):
episode came out more than four years ago. This happens
to me all the time. But the important thing is
that we're bringing that episode out. Is today's Saturday classic,
so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to
(00:50):
the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Today we have someone I first learned about from the
people of Color in European art history Tumbler also known
as medieval poc. It is Irah Frederick Aldridge. He was
a Shakespearean actor in the eighteen hundreds, and you might
even call him the first famous American Shakespearean actor, although
(01:14):
there was another American named Edwin Forrest who was popular
in both the United States and Britain at about the
same time. There is actual debate over which of them
should be called the first famous American Shakespearean actor, which
amuses me. But to return to the story, uh Aldredge
has largely been excluded from biographies of Shakespearean actors and
(01:36):
from histories of the theaters where he performed and the like.
In some cases there were even like histories of the
theater written in in France, for example, that were then
translated into English, and in the English language versions from
you know, the late nineteenth early twentieth century just kind
of excluded from the translated version. He's a little hard
(01:59):
to and information about. There not that many books about him.
But he was one of the first Americans to achieve
fame as a Shakespearean actor, as we said, and he
was definitely the first black man to really do so.
He had. There were a couple of other black actors
performing Shakespeare at about the same time, but none of
them got nearly the international renown that he did. He
(02:21):
became a really famous figure on the Victorian Shakespeare stage.
And there is some haziness about Aldridge's parents in his
early life, and part of it is thanks to the
holes and records and documentation that come up pretty often
on our show, especially the farther back you go. But
Complicating that was a heavily romanticized story of his ancestry
(02:43):
that floated around as part of the publicity for his
acting career, and that kind of nebulous version was also
picked up by biographers. The most basic version of this
story was just that Aldridge was from Senegal and descended
from royalty there. An African prince newly arrived from Senegal
(03:03):
would have been at the time somewhat more acceptable to
white theater audiences than an American black man descended from slaves,
So it's possible that, however this story came to be,
it was motivated at least in part by appeasing the
white theater crowds sensibilities, logically probably also just as a
publicity move, But at least one biographer went so far
(03:26):
as to detail a whole saga of IRA's father, whose
named Daniel, being brought to the United States by a
missionary to be educated and to flee a conspiracy playing
out among the Senegalese nobility. And in this story, Daniel
Aldridge married while he was in the States and then
returned to Senegal with his wife after the danger had passed,
(03:47):
and that would be just before IRA's birth. As this
is told, this is a very very dramatic story. It's
probably also just a story, although it's really unclear at
this point exactly when Aldred's ancestors were brought to North
America or how they ultimately came to be free people
living in New York. Daniel Aldrig's birthplace was either New
(04:09):
York or Baltimore. His death certificate says New York, and
his obituary says Baltimore. Yeah, We've had a few of
those where like different documents say completely different things. Uh,
And at that point, all you can kind of do
is shrug. Ira himself was born in New York on
July eighteen oh seven. He had several siblings, but only
(04:31):
one older brother, Joshua, survived. Their mother, Laurna, was either
from North Carolina or Delaware, depending on which record you're
looking at, and she died in eighteen seventeen, when Ira
was ten and Joshua was approximately twelve. Although New York
had passed a gradual Emancipation Act in seventeen ninety nine,
many enslaved people born before that year weren't freed until
(04:55):
eighteen twenty seven, and census records reported that about seventy five.
Enslaved people were still living in New York in eighteen thirty,
so while Ira and his family were free, there were
also enslaved people as well as people who were working
out in dentures that were required by the Gradual Emancipation
Act living in New York City at the same time,
(05:16):
and in addition to this stratification in terms of freedom
for the black community, public facilities were segregated, including the
schools and the theaters that Ira would attend as a
young man. Iris early education was at the African Free School,
which had been founded by the New York Manumission Society.
The African Free School was open to children up until
(05:38):
the age of fifteen, but it seems as though Ira
stayed until he was fifteen or possibly sixteen, perhaps because
he had enrolled when he was already a young teenager.
In about eighteen twenty, William Alexander Brown, who had previously
worked as a steward on a ship that sailed from
New York to Liverpool, opened a theater. This was the
(05:58):
African Groves, sometimes just called Brown's Theater or the African Theater.
In this theater, which was in Manhattan's West Side, he
was building on the success of an ice cream garden
he had previously opened, and this ice cream garden serves
tea and ice cream and also functioned as a performance space.
It was one of the very very few such venues
(06:19):
in the city that was open to black patrons, and
it was one of a string of Brown's social and
performing arts venues that he opened over the years. At first,
the coverage of the African Grove Theater from the white
press was largely negative and dismissive, but eventually it grew
so popular that it had to designate a section for
white audience members. It was certainly not the only New
(06:43):
York theater that was run by and for its black residents,
but it was the most ambitious and successful. In addition
to other works, its stage adaptations of Shakespeare, and one
of its star performers was a man named James Hewlett.
So when Aldridge most likely both watched from the audience
and of untually acted alongside. In eighteen or eighteen two,
(07:05):
Ira and Joshua Brown both landed roles at the theater.
Ira would have been fifteen or sixteen at that point,
but their father was not a fan of this idea.
He pulled them out of the show, possibly because he
wanted them to become ministers instead of actors, but Ira
would not be deterred. At the age of about seventeen,
he started trying to build a career as a professional
(07:27):
actor full time, and this was a difficult time to
be a black actor, both in New York specifically and
in the United States in general. The African Grove burned
down under mysterious circumstances about three years after its opening,
and that had followed a general theater closure during a
yellow fever outbreak, and even before that, the African Grove
(07:49):
had been the target of complaints from white neighbors about
noise and crowds, as well as sabotage attempts from a
rival theater company. It strikes me as so star change
that there were theater rivalries, including sabotage outside of New York.
Opportunities for black entertainers, which had not been all that
(08:10):
numerous in the first place, were really dwindling. In the
early mid eighteen hundreds, menstrel shows performed by white actors
and black face, often in a way that offensively lampooned
and caricatured black characters, were becoming more and more popular.
The stock character Jim Crow became part of menstrel shows
by eighteen twenty eight, and the name Jim Crow would
(08:32):
be used as a racist slur. Within a decade, menstrel
shows performed by white people in black face started crowding
out opportunities for black performers, sometimes while simultaneously copying those
performers original work. With all of this going on, not
long after his decision to become a professional actor, Aldridge
(08:53):
also decided that he would do so in Europe and
not in the United States. According to a pamphlet about
Aldred which was published during his lifetime, one of his
former classmates quote was in the habit of taking Mr
Henry Wallack's dresses to the Chatham Theater. Henry Wallack and
his brother James were both British actors who had become
a staple in New York's white theaters. At this point,
(09:16):
the theater scene in New York was thriving so much
that a lot of British actors are being drawn to
New York to perform there, much to the chagrin of
the theaters, especially in London. This was the case with
the Wallack brothers. So Ira Aldridge renewed his acquaintance with
(09:36):
this former classmate who had been delivering the costumes to
the theater for the Wallacks, and through his friend he
got an introduction to the two men. Both of them
took an interest in Aldridge in his career, and even
though his acting opportunities had been limited at this point,
he seemed to have already shown some clear talent. Henry
(09:57):
wrote him a letter of introduction, and Jane, possibly by coincidence,
booked passage on the same ship to Liverpool that Aldridge
had secured employment on. He was going to work as
a steward, basically to get across the Atlantic Ocean into
England once they were on board, though James requested Aldred
does his personal assistant. And Aldridge got to Liverpool in
(10:20):
eighteen twenty four, and in a year he would make
his debut with top Billing. And we're going to talk
about that, but first we are going to pause for
a moment and uh talk about one of the sponsors
that keeps the show going. In the fall of eighteen
(10:41):
twenty five, Irah Frederick Aldridge made his London debut, starring
in West Indian and African melodramas at the Royal Cobrag
Theater under the pseudonym Mr. Keene. He would have a
variety of pseudonyms, especially early in his career, and at
this point he was only eighteen, and we don't really
know the story of how Aldridge went from a new
(11:01):
arrival in London to securing top billing in his debut performance,
albeit at one of London's minor theaters. It's likely that
Henry Wallack's letter of introduction really helped, as well as
the novelty of having a black actor on the stage.
Aldridge was, we should be clear, certainly not the first
actor of color in Britain, but there weren't that many
before this point. Audiences seemed to love him in these
(11:26):
first performances at the Coburg. Newspaper reports uh talk about
really long and loud applause for his performances and audiences
who just seemed enraptured with him. Some of the reviews
were positive, but a lot of them, though, were frankly
just hostile. They painted a caricatured picture of his appearance,
(11:46):
exaggerating his facial features and his skin color, and in
one case claimed that the shape of his lips made
it impossible for him to pronounce proper English if you
read like the His biographies lacked a lot of these,
and if you read them, they are terrible. While performing
at the cobourg Aldridge met the woman that he would
(12:06):
soon marry, Margaret gil who was from a laboring family.
Similarly to the story that Aldridge was really descended from
African royalty, Margaret was often presented as the daughter of
a Member of Parliament, and while the faux history of
Aldridge's parentage made him more appealing to the audience, the
idea that she was the daughter of an MP gave
(12:27):
Margaret a little more social protection than she had as
the daughter of a poor family. Soon after his engagement
at the Coburg ended, Aldridge and his new wife moved
on to Brighton, and then they went on a tour
through the UK's provinces. He took on both comedic and
dramatic roles, and since he could sing, he performed in
variety shows. Most of his roles were those of black characters,
(12:51):
who at that point had typically been played by white
actors in black face. Some of his most common roles
were Othello, which is probably the most obvious at the time,
and another was Orinoco in the Revolt of Surinam. Almost
immediately he was being billed as the African Roscius, and
(13:11):
Roscius was a Roman actor who became sort of the
go to nickname for particularly successful actors later on. I
wonder why that fell out of favor. We could be
using that today, I know, and I it was one
of those things where I was so many people were
referring to it, uh in the in you know, articles
(13:33):
about him and things like that. I had to go
look it up because I was like, but contextually, this
is a nickname for a famous actor, but it is
not really in common use. Now, let's bring it back.
Even though his performances were well received and he found
work really often, he and his wife really struggled financially
at first. His engagements only gave him a lot of
(13:57):
the times a few days of work at a time,
and without a steady employment or a patron, at times
he would go for weeks without pay, especially in the
earlier parts of his career. Aldridge falls in and out
of the historical record. Sometimes the only trace we really
have of him is in playbills and theater advertisements. We
do know that he returned to London in eighteen thirty
(14:20):
three to take over the role of Othello at the
Covent Garden Theater. He was picking up the role from
another famous actor, Edmund Keane, who had unexpectedly died, and
once again he got a generally warm reception from the
audience and a fairly vicious one from critics. Before he
even performed, there were articles attacking him as being unfit
(14:41):
for the stage because of his color. Reviews were filled
with racist descriptions of his voice and appearance, and an outraged,
pitying response to his co star Ellen Tree and the
quote indignity of being pawed about by him in her
role of Desdemona. Although he was at this point still
a relatively in experienced actor, the critical response was really
(15:03):
just truly cruel and frequently threaded through with very thinly
veiled racism. Is veiled at all? Yeah? Sometimes it was
very explicit and written before he had even performed the part.
Isn't that how reviews? Yeah, it's It's somewhat unclear why
the critical reception to his work was somewhat kinder outside
(15:27):
of London. I'm not suggesting that there was none of
that in the reviews from other parts of the UK,
but it seemed to be at least toned down a
little bit. Also not totally clear why the reviews seemed
so vastly out of step with the audience response to
his performances. One theory is that in London, the critics
(15:49):
knew that he was really an American from New York
and not a prince from Senegal. Another is that social
conditions in London, including the rise of trade unions and
class consciousness among workers, was priming working class audiences to
really like the idea of an actor who was struggling
against oppression in a way that journalists weren't quite in
(16:11):
touch with. Regardless of what the causes were for this
sort of disparity between critics and theater goers, After his
run as a Fellow, Aldrich returned to acting in London's
minor theaters as well as in smaller British towns and cities,
and he started to get more steady work, developing a
following of passionate fans and building up in a steady
(16:34):
income at multiple venues. Critics wrote about his having to
basically carry along cast members who were not as skilled
in their performance or didn't even know their lines. Eventually,
he began to expand his repertoire into Shakespearean roles that
were typically cast with white men, including Shylock Richard, the
Third Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear. Using makeup to lighten his skin,
(16:57):
he basically became a Victorian era equivalent of a movie star,
complete with a legion of adoring fans and a steady
stream of female admirers. And this was mainly a true
still outside of London. He never really caught on in
the eye of London society, but outside of it he
was incredibly popular, including developing a string of patrons who
(17:19):
made his financial life a lot more comfortable. In July
of eighteen fifty two, he started his first major European tour,
including royal performances and heads of state in the Audience,
which was again incredibly well received, but still did not
win critics over to his side. When he made yet
another go in London. He also started adapting works of
(17:40):
his own, including a complete redoing of Titus Andronicus, in
which It's Moorish character is the hero. I would love
to see that, right, I'm kind of intrigued. Apparently it
was kind of uneven in his execution. Uh. And if
you're familiar with Titus andronics, like the Moorish character in
that is not a hero at all. So uh yeah,
(18:04):
I I have not. I don't even know if an
adapt tate, like a copy of that adaptation even still exists,
but I am quite intrigued. This tour of the continent
also came just a few months after Harriet beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin had first been published, first in the
United States and then in Britain. And this book stoked
(18:25):
anti slavery sent sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic,
and it started to further shift the perceptions of Aldridge's performance,
particularly in the role of Othello. While that eighteen thirty
three Coming Garden Theater performance had been met with pamphlets
saying that a black man was unfit to be on
the stage in Russia, in eighteen fifty eight, one review
(18:46):
read quote, I am firmly convinced that after Aldridge, it
is impossible to see Othello performed by a white actor,
be it Garrick himself. And that's a reference to David Garrick,
who was a famous British Shakespearean actor, Although he would
briefly return to Britain and even be granted British citizenship
on November seven, eighteen sixty three. His overwhelmingly positive receptions
(19:09):
in France and Russia meant that he spent most of
the last six years of his career there, ultimately making
a name for himself as one of history's great tragedians
and becoming a bigger draw than Russia's most famous actors. Apparently,
Russia in particular loved him a lot. France also, especially
(19:30):
especially Russia, although shifting perceptions of race and of the
institution of slavery had also changed the way audiences and
the press were regarding him. Uh that doesn't mean that
the racism was magically over. The later part of his
career was beset by unfounded rumors that on stage he
(19:51):
had stabbed Iago's and suffocated Desdemona's for real. This led
to his co star in Moscow refusing to take the
stage with him and her role as Desdemona. His response
was quote, I have played that role more than three
hundred times in my life, and in all these times,
I have suffocated possibly two maximum three Desdemonas, and I
(20:12):
stabbed I think one Iago obviously was a joke. It
riled people up more uh. Biographers Herbert Marshall and Mildred Stock,
who wrote the first really definitive biography of him in
the nineteen fifties, described this whole incident as quote an
out and out case of color prejudice. It was like,
(20:35):
really a completely unfounded rumor based on nothing, because people
were scared. If he had been an actor at the
Glonguignol it would have made him more popular. Oh yeah, no,
he's really he's really smothering people. Al Dredge continued to
tour and perform for the rest of his life, although
his wife, Margaret eventually stopped accompanying him a few years
(20:57):
before her death on March eighteen sixty four. She was
about a decade older than Ira, and her health had
been poor at that point. Aldridge had been supporting her
and an illegitimate son, Ira Daniel, who had been born
in May of eighteen forty seven and who Margaret raised
as her own. It's also unclear whether she knew about this,
(21:19):
but he had been supporting a second family as well.
He'd had two more children with a Swedish woman named
Amanda Pauline von Brandt. These were Irene Laurna Pauline, who
was born in eighteen sixty and Ira Frederick Olaff known
as Fritz, who was born in eighteen sixty two. And
similarly to how Margaret had been described as the daughter
(21:40):
of an MP, Amanda Pauline was said to be a baroness,
she was definitely not. She was the daughter of a fairier.
Over the course of his life, Aldridge had actually fathered
several other children as well. In eighteen fifty five, another actor,
William Stothard, sued him over an affair with his wife Emma,
after she'd delivered a biracial baby. Aldridge was found guilty
(22:03):
of criminal conversation and sentenced to pay a fine. Ira
married Amanda Pauline in eighteen sixty five, and after that
they had two more children, Amanda Christina Elizabeth, born in
March of eighteen sixty six, and Rachel Margaret Fredrika, who
was born four and a half months after aldridge death.
Ira died in Poland on August seventh, eighteen sixty seven,
(22:25):
and he was buried there. Although he made specific plans
to return to the United States at various points, it
seems that he never did. When the new Memorial Theater
reopened at Stratford upon Avon in ninety two, Aldridge's name
was included among other great Shakespearean actors commemorated with plaques
among the seats. He is the only black actor of
(22:47):
the thirty three included. As I noted, Aldridge became quite
successful in his career and he developed a pretty healthy income.
He started giving a significant portion of that income to
abolitionist causes, and he also played a part in an
abolitionist work of art outside of the theater, which we
will talk about after another brief sponsor break. Irah Frederick
(23:17):
Aldridge was the subject of several works of art during
his lifetime. One was head of a Negro in the
character of Othello, which was painted by James Northcote in
the first year that Ira himself appeared as Othello on stage.
So although the artist didn't specifically say this is Ira Aldridge,
the widespread conclusion is that that's who paint the painting
(23:40):
is of. But another came back into the public eye
only very recently after having been in private collections for
a hundred and eighty years. It's by John Phillips Simpson,
and it's called the Captive Slave, and it was acquired
by the Art Institute of Chicago in two thousand nine. Yeah,
before this, people knew that the that it existed, and
(24:01):
there was a really poor quality reproduction of it, but
the original painting had been out of the public eye.
The Captive Slave was painted sometime in the late eighteen twenties,
and it's a painting of a young black man sitting
on a bench wearing manacles. He's wearing an orange jumpsuit
and for modern viewers it will probably immediately bring to
(24:22):
mind the idea of a prison jumpsuit. He's looking upward
and his face carries this impression of nearly tearful sorrow
and lost. This is the painting that first went on
exhibition at the Royal Academy of the Arts in eight
and its entry in the exhibition catalog included lines from Charity,
which is an anti slavery poem by William Cowper. It's
(24:46):
clearly meant as an anti slavery work, and the man
portraying the slave in the painting is Irah Frederick Aldridge. Um.
A lot of people don't know that there was an
incredibly famous black actor doing Shakespeare in Victorian Europe and
especially England, even though they didn't love him in London,
(25:07):
but everywhere else they super Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
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of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
(25:29):
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Our old health stuff works email address no longer works,
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(25:53):
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your favorite shows. H m hm
Hello and Happy Saturday. Shakespearean actor Irah Frederick Aldridge came
up a couple of times in our recent episode on
our Turo Alfonso Schaumberg. As I was writing that episode,
I thought our episode on I Frederick Aldridge is so recent,
everyone will surely remember it. Uh turns out though that
(00:25):
episode came out more than four years ago. This happens
to me all the time. But the important thing is
that we're bringing that episode out. Is today's Saturday classic,
so enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class,
a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to
(00:50):
the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Today we have someone I first learned about from the
people of Color in European art history Tumbler also known
as medieval poc. It is Irah Frederick Aldridge. He was
a Shakespearean actor in the eighteen hundreds, and you might
even call him the first famous American Shakespearean actor, although
(01:14):
there was another American named Edwin Forrest who was popular
in both the United States and Britain at about the
same time. There is actual debate over which of them
should be called the first famous American Shakespearean actor, which
amuses me. But to return to the story, uh Aldredge
has largely been excluded from biographies of Shakespearean actors and
(01:36):
from histories of the theaters where he performed and the like.
In some cases there were even like histories of the
theater written in in France, for example, that were then
translated into English, and in the English language versions from
you know, the late nineteenth early twentieth century just kind
of excluded from the translated version. He's a little hard
(01:59):
to and information about. There not that many books about him.
But he was one of the first Americans to achieve
fame as a Shakespearean actor, as we said, and he
was definitely the first black man to really do so.
He had. There were a couple of other black actors
performing Shakespeare at about the same time, but none of
them got nearly the international renown that he did. He
(02:21):
became a really famous figure on the Victorian Shakespeare stage.
And there is some haziness about Aldridge's parents in his
early life, and part of it is thanks to the
holes and records and documentation that come up pretty often
on our show, especially the farther back you go. But
Complicating that was a heavily romanticized story of his ancestry
(02:43):
that floated around as part of the publicity for his
acting career, and that kind of nebulous version was also
picked up by biographers. The most basic version of this
story was just that Aldridge was from Senegal and descended
from royalty there. An African prince newly arrived from Senegal
(03:03):
would have been at the time somewhat more acceptable to
white theater audiences than an American black man descended from slaves,
So it's possible that, however this story came to be,
it was motivated at least in part by appeasing the
white theater crowds sensibilities, logically probably also just as a
publicity move, But at least one biographer went so far
(03:26):
as to detail a whole saga of IRA's father, whose
named Daniel, being brought to the United States by a
missionary to be educated and to flee a conspiracy playing
out among the Senegalese nobility. And in this story, Daniel
Aldridge married while he was in the States and then
returned to Senegal with his wife after the danger had passed,
(03:47):
and that would be just before IRA's birth. As this
is told, this is a very very dramatic story. It's
probably also just a story, although it's really unclear at
this point exactly when Aldred's ancestors were brought to North
America or how they ultimately came to be free people
living in New York. Daniel Aldrig's birthplace was either New
(04:09):
York or Baltimore. His death certificate says New York, and
his obituary says Baltimore. Yeah, We've had a few of
those where like different documents say completely different things. Uh,
And at that point, all you can kind of do
is shrug. Ira himself was born in New York on
July eighteen oh seven. He had several siblings, but only
(04:31):
one older brother, Joshua, survived. Their mother, Laurna, was either
from North Carolina or Delaware, depending on which record you're
looking at, and she died in eighteen seventeen, when Ira
was ten and Joshua was approximately twelve. Although New York
had passed a gradual Emancipation Act in seventeen ninety nine,
many enslaved people born before that year weren't freed until
(04:55):
eighteen twenty seven, and census records reported that about seventy five.
Enslaved people were still living in New York in eighteen thirty,
so while Ira and his family were free, there were
also enslaved people as well as people who were working
out in dentures that were required by the Gradual Emancipation
Act living in New York City at the same time,
(05:16):
and in addition to this stratification in terms of freedom
for the black community, public facilities were segregated, including the
schools and the theaters that Ira would attend as a
young man. Iris early education was at the African Free School,
which had been founded by the New York Manumission Society.
The African Free School was open to children up until
(05:38):
the age of fifteen, but it seems as though Ira
stayed until he was fifteen or possibly sixteen, perhaps because
he had enrolled when he was already a young teenager.
In about eighteen twenty, William Alexander Brown, who had previously
worked as a steward on a ship that sailed from
New York to Liverpool, opened a theater. This was the
(05:58):
African Groves, sometimes just called Brown's Theater or the African Theater.
In this theater, which was in Manhattan's West Side, he
was building on the success of an ice cream garden
he had previously opened, and this ice cream garden serves
tea and ice cream and also functioned as a performance space.
It was one of the very very few such venues
(06:19):
in the city that was open to black patrons, and
it was one of a string of Brown's social and
performing arts venues that he opened over the years. At first,
the coverage of the African Grove Theater from the white
press was largely negative and dismissive, but eventually it grew
so popular that it had to designate a section for
white audience members. It was certainly not the only New
(06:43):
York theater that was run by and for its black residents,
but it was the most ambitious and successful. In addition
to other works, its stage adaptations of Shakespeare, and one
of its star performers was a man named James Hewlett.
So when Aldridge most likely both watched from the audience
and of untually acted alongside. In eighteen or eighteen two,
(07:05):
Ira and Joshua Brown both landed roles at the theater.
Ira would have been fifteen or sixteen at that point,
but their father was not a fan of this idea.
He pulled them out of the show, possibly because he
wanted them to become ministers instead of actors, but Ira
would not be deterred. At the age of about seventeen,
he started trying to build a career as a professional
(07:27):
actor full time, and this was a difficult time to
be a black actor, both in New York specifically and
in the United States in general. The African Grove burned
down under mysterious circumstances about three years after its opening,
and that had followed a general theater closure during a
yellow fever outbreak, and even before that, the African Grove
(07:49):
had been the target of complaints from white neighbors about
noise and crowds, as well as sabotage attempts from a
rival theater company. It strikes me as so star change
that there were theater rivalries, including sabotage outside of New York.
Opportunities for black entertainers, which had not been all that
(08:10):
numerous in the first place, were really dwindling. In the
early mid eighteen hundreds, menstrel shows performed by white actors
and black face, often in a way that offensively lampooned
and caricatured black characters, were becoming more and more popular.
The stock character Jim Crow became part of menstrel shows
by eighteen twenty eight, and the name Jim Crow would
(08:32):
be used as a racist slur. Within a decade, menstrel
shows performed by white people in black face started crowding
out opportunities for black performers, sometimes while simultaneously copying those
performers original work. With all of this going on, not
long after his decision to become a professional actor, Aldridge
(08:53):
also decided that he would do so in Europe and
not in the United States. According to a pamphlet about
Aldred which was published during his lifetime, one of his
former classmates quote was in the habit of taking Mr
Henry Wallack's dresses to the Chatham Theater. Henry Wallack and
his brother James were both British actors who had become
a staple in New York's white theaters. At this point,
(09:16):
the theater scene in New York was thriving so much
that a lot of British actors are being drawn to
New York to perform there, much to the chagrin of
the theaters, especially in London. This was the case with
the Wallack brothers. So Ira Aldridge renewed his acquaintance with
(09:36):
this former classmate who had been delivering the costumes to
the theater for the Wallacks, and through his friend he
got an introduction to the two men. Both of them
took an interest in Aldridge in his career, and even
though his acting opportunities had been limited at this point,
he seemed to have already shown some clear talent. Henry
(09:57):
wrote him a letter of introduction, and Jane, possibly by coincidence,
booked passage on the same ship to Liverpool that Aldridge
had secured employment on. He was going to work as
a steward, basically to get across the Atlantic Ocean into
England once they were on board, though James requested Aldred
does his personal assistant. And Aldridge got to Liverpool in
(10:20):
eighteen twenty four, and in a year he would make
his debut with top Billing. And we're going to talk
about that, but first we are going to pause for
a moment and uh talk about one of the sponsors
that keeps the show going. In the fall of eighteen
(10:41):
twenty five, Irah Frederick Aldridge made his London debut, starring
in West Indian and African melodramas at the Royal Cobrag
Theater under the pseudonym Mr. Keene. He would have a
variety of pseudonyms, especially early in his career, and at
this point he was only eighteen, and we don't really
know the story of how Aldridge went from a new
(11:01):
arrival in London to securing top billing in his debut performance,
albeit at one of London's minor theaters. It's likely that
Henry Wallack's letter of introduction really helped, as well as
the novelty of having a black actor on the stage.
Aldridge was, we should be clear, certainly not the first
actor of color in Britain, but there weren't that many
before this point. Audiences seemed to love him in these
(11:26):
first performances at the Coburg. Newspaper reports uh talk about
really long and loud applause for his performances and audiences
who just seemed enraptured with him. Some of the reviews
were positive, but a lot of them, though, were frankly
just hostile. They painted a caricatured picture of his appearance,
(11:46):
exaggerating his facial features and his skin color, and in
one case claimed that the shape of his lips made
it impossible for him to pronounce proper English if you
read like the His biographies lacked a lot of these,
and if you read them, they are terrible. While performing
at the cobourg Aldridge met the woman that he would
(12:06):
soon marry, Margaret gil who was from a laboring family.
Similarly to the story that Aldridge was really descended from
African royalty, Margaret was often presented as the daughter of
a Member of Parliament, and while the faux history of
Aldridge's parentage made him more appealing to the audience, the
idea that she was the daughter of an MP gave
(12:27):
Margaret a little more social protection than she had as
the daughter of a poor family. Soon after his engagement
at the Coburg ended, Aldridge and his new wife moved
on to Brighton, and then they went on a tour
through the UK's provinces. He took on both comedic and
dramatic roles, and since he could sing, he performed in
variety shows. Most of his roles were those of black characters,
(12:51):
who at that point had typically been played by white
actors in black face. Some of his most common roles
were Othello, which is probably the most obvious at the time,
and another was Orinoco in the Revolt of Surinam. Almost
immediately he was being billed as the African Roscius, and
(13:11):
Roscius was a Roman actor who became sort of the
go to nickname for particularly successful actors later on. I
wonder why that fell out of favor. We could be
using that today, I know, and I it was one
of those things where I was so many people were
referring to it, uh in the in you know, articles
(13:33):
about him and things like that. I had to go
look it up because I was like, but contextually, this
is a nickname for a famous actor, but it is
not really in common use. Now, let's bring it back.
Even though his performances were well received and he found
work really often, he and his wife really struggled financially
at first. His engagements only gave him a lot of
(13:57):
the times a few days of work at a time,
and without a steady employment or a patron, at times
he would go for weeks without pay, especially in the
earlier parts of his career. Aldridge falls in and out
of the historical record. Sometimes the only trace we really
have of him is in playbills and theater advertisements. We
do know that he returned to London in eighteen thirty
(14:20):
three to take over the role of Othello at the
Covent Garden Theater. He was picking up the role from
another famous actor, Edmund Keane, who had unexpectedly died, and
once again he got a generally warm reception from the
audience and a fairly vicious one from critics. Before he
even performed, there were articles attacking him as being unfit
(14:41):
for the stage because of his color. Reviews were filled
with racist descriptions of his voice and appearance, and an outraged,
pitying response to his co star Ellen Tree and the
quote indignity of being pawed about by him in her
role of Desdemona. Although he was at this point still
a relatively in experienced actor, the critical response was really
(15:03):
just truly cruel and frequently threaded through with very thinly
veiled racism. Is veiled at all? Yeah? Sometimes it was
very explicit and written before he had even performed the part.
Isn't that how reviews? Yeah, it's It's somewhat unclear why
the critical reception to his work was somewhat kinder outside
(15:27):
of London. I'm not suggesting that there was none of
that in the reviews from other parts of the UK,
but it seemed to be at least toned down a
little bit. Also not totally clear why the reviews seemed
so vastly out of step with the audience response to
his performances. One theory is that in London, the critics
(15:49):
knew that he was really an American from New York
and not a prince from Senegal. Another is that social
conditions in London, including the rise of trade unions and
class consciousness among workers, was priming working class audiences to
really like the idea of an actor who was struggling
against oppression in a way that journalists weren't quite in
(16:11):
touch with. Regardless of what the causes were for this
sort of disparity between critics and theater goers, After his
run as a Fellow, Aldrich returned to acting in London's
minor theaters as well as in smaller British towns and cities,
and he started to get more steady work, developing a
following of passionate fans and building up in a steady
(16:34):
income at multiple venues. Critics wrote about his having to
basically carry along cast members who were not as skilled
in their performance or didn't even know their lines. Eventually,
he began to expand his repertoire into Shakespearean roles that
were typically cast with white men, including Shylock Richard, the
Third Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear. Using makeup to lighten his skin,
(16:57):
he basically became a Victorian era equivalent of a movie star,
complete with a legion of adoring fans and a steady
stream of female admirers. And this was mainly a true
still outside of London. He never really caught on in
the eye of London society, but outside of it he
was incredibly popular, including developing a string of patrons who
(17:19):
made his financial life a lot more comfortable. In July
of eighteen fifty two, he started his first major European tour,
including royal performances and heads of state in the Audience,
which was again incredibly well received, but still did not
win critics over to his side. When he made yet
another go in London. He also started adapting works of
(17:40):
his own, including a complete redoing of Titus Andronicus, in
which It's Moorish character is the hero. I would love
to see that, right, I'm kind of intrigued. Apparently it
was kind of uneven in his execution. Uh. And if
you're familiar with Titus andronics, like the Moorish character in
that is not a hero at all. So uh yeah,
(18:04):
I I have not. I don't even know if an
adapt tate, like a copy of that adaptation even still exists,
but I am quite intrigued. This tour of the continent
also came just a few months after Harriet beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin had first been published, first in the
United States and then in Britain. And this book stoked
(18:25):
anti slavery sent sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic,
and it started to further shift the perceptions of Aldridge's performance,
particularly in the role of Othello. While that eighteen thirty
three Coming Garden Theater performance had been met with pamphlets
saying that a black man was unfit to be on
the stage in Russia, in eighteen fifty eight, one review
(18:46):
read quote, I am firmly convinced that after Aldridge, it
is impossible to see Othello performed by a white actor,
be it Garrick himself. And that's a reference to David Garrick,
who was a famous British Shakespearean actor, Although he would
briefly return to Britain and even be granted British citizenship
on November seven, eighteen sixty three. His overwhelmingly positive receptions
(19:09):
in France and Russia meant that he spent most of
the last six years of his career there, ultimately making
a name for himself as one of history's great tragedians
and becoming a bigger draw than Russia's most famous actors. Apparently,
Russia in particular loved him a lot. France also, especially
(19:30):
especially Russia, although shifting perceptions of race and of the
institution of slavery had also changed the way audiences and
the press were regarding him. Uh that doesn't mean that
the racism was magically over. The later part of his
career was beset by unfounded rumors that on stage he
(19:51):
had stabbed Iago's and suffocated Desdemona's for real. This led
to his co star in Moscow refusing to take the
stage with him and her role as Desdemona. His response
was quote, I have played that role more than three
hundred times in my life, and in all these times,
I have suffocated possibly two maximum three Desdemonas, and I
(20:12):
stabbed I think one Iago obviously was a joke. It
riled people up more uh. Biographers Herbert Marshall and Mildred Stock,
who wrote the first really definitive biography of him in
the nineteen fifties, described this whole incident as quote an
out and out case of color prejudice. It was like,
(20:35):
really a completely unfounded rumor based on nothing, because people
were scared. If he had been an actor at the
Glonguignol it would have made him more popular. Oh yeah, no,
he's really he's really smothering people. Al Dredge continued to
tour and perform for the rest of his life, although
his wife, Margaret eventually stopped accompanying him a few years
(20:57):
before her death on March eighteen sixty four. She was
about a decade older than Ira, and her health had
been poor at that point. Aldridge had been supporting her
and an illegitimate son, Ira Daniel, who had been born
in May of eighteen forty seven and who Margaret raised
as her own. It's also unclear whether she knew about this,
(21:19):
but he had been supporting a second family as well.
He'd had two more children with a Swedish woman named
Amanda Pauline von Brandt. These were Irene Laurna Pauline, who
was born in eighteen sixty and Ira Frederick Olaff known
as Fritz, who was born in eighteen sixty two. And
similarly to how Margaret had been described as the daughter
(21:40):
of an MP, Amanda Pauline was said to be a baroness,
she was definitely not. She was the daughter of a fairier.
Over the course of his life, Aldridge had actually fathered
several other children as well. In eighteen fifty five, another actor,
William Stothard, sued him over an affair with his wife Emma,
after she'd delivered a biracial baby. Aldridge was found guilty
(22:03):
of criminal conversation and sentenced to pay a fine. Ira
married Amanda Pauline in eighteen sixty five, and after that
they had two more children, Amanda Christina Elizabeth, born in
March of eighteen sixty six, and Rachel Margaret Fredrika, who
was born four and a half months after aldridge death.
Ira died in Poland on August seventh, eighteen sixty seven,
(22:25):
and he was buried there. Although he made specific plans
to return to the United States at various points, it
seems that he never did. When the new Memorial Theater
reopened at Stratford upon Avon in ninety two, Aldridge's name
was included among other great Shakespearean actors commemorated with plaques
among the seats. He is the only black actor of
(22:47):
the thirty three included. As I noted, Aldridge became quite
successful in his career and he developed a pretty healthy income.
He started giving a significant portion of that income to
abolitionist causes, and he also played a part in an
abolitionist work of art outside of the theater, which we
will talk about after another brief sponsor break. Irah Frederick
(23:17):
Aldridge was the subject of several works of art during
his lifetime. One was head of a Negro in the
character of Othello, which was painted by James Northcote in
the first year that Ira himself appeared as Othello on stage.
So although the artist didn't specifically say this is Ira Aldridge,
the widespread conclusion is that that's who paint the painting
(23:40):
is of. But another came back into the public eye
only very recently after having been in private collections for
a hundred and eighty years. It's by John Phillips Simpson,
and it's called the Captive Slave, and it was acquired
by the Art Institute of Chicago in two thousand nine. Yeah,
before this, people knew that the that it existed, and
(24:01):
there was a really poor quality reproduction of it, but
the original painting had been out of the public eye.
The Captive Slave was painted sometime in the late eighteen twenties,
and it's a painting of a young black man sitting
on a bench wearing manacles. He's wearing an orange jumpsuit
and for modern viewers it will probably immediately bring to
(24:22):
mind the idea of a prison jumpsuit. He's looking upward
and his face carries this impression of nearly tearful sorrow
and lost. This is the painting that first went on
exhibition at the Royal Academy of the Arts in eight
and its entry in the exhibition catalog included lines from Charity,
which is an anti slavery poem by William Cowper. It's
(24:46):
clearly meant as an anti slavery work, and the man
portraying the slave in the painting is Irah Frederick Aldridge. Um.
A lot of people don't know that there was an
incredibly famous black actor doing Shakespeare in Victorian Europe and
especially England, even though they didn't love him in London,
(25:07):
but everywhere else they super Thanks so much for joining
us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of
the archive, if you heard an email address or a
Facebook U r L or something similar over the course
of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current
(25:29):
email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com.
Our old health stuff works email address no longer works,
and you can find us all over social media at
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