page_title: Ira Aldridge
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Ira Aldridge / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Ira Aldridge, African American actor, in the role of Mungo from The Padlock, 1820s or 1830s.
context_page_description: Ira Frederick Aldridge was an American and later British stage actor and playwright who made his career after 1824 largely on the London stage and in Europe, especially in Shakespearean roles. Born in New York City, Aldridge is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage honoured 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. At the time of his sudden death, while on tour in Poland, he was arranging a triumphant return to America, with a planned 100-show tour to the United States.
  He was married twice, once to an Englishwoman, once to a Swedish woman, and had a family in England. Two of his daughters became professional opera singers.
context_section_description: Aldridge was born in New York City to Reverend Daniel and Luranah (also spelled Lurona) Aldridge on July 24, 1807. At the age of 13, Aldridge went to the African Free School in New York City, established by the New York Manumission Society for the children of free black people and slaves. They were given a classical education, with the study of English grammar, writing, mathematics, geography, and astronomy.  His classmates at the African free school included Charles L. Reason, George T. Downing, and Henry Highland Garnet. His early exposure to theater included viewing plays from the high balcony of the Park Theatre, New York's leading theater of the time, and seeing productions of Shakespeare's plays at the African Grove Theatre.
  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.  The short-lived company was the subject of protests by neighbors, thuggery attacks by a competitor, and racist parody by the Sheriff of New York who was also a newspaper publisher, making it clear that Aldridge's career prospects in America were dim.  Aldridge 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 the persistent discrimination which black actors had to endure 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 moving toward abolishing slavery in the British colonies, which increased the prospect of black actors being able to perform.
  Having limited onstage experience and lacking name recognition, Aldridge concocted a story of his African lineage, claiming to have descended from the Fulani princely line. By 1831, he for a time took 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 would later be called African Roscius, after the famous Roman actor of the first century BCE.
  At 17, Aldridge first appeared on the London stage in May 1825 in a low profile production of Othello.  On October 10, 1825, Aldridge made a much more high profile debut at London's Royal Coburg Theatre, and became the first African-American actor to establish himself professionally in a foreign country.  He played 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 (itself adapted from Aphra Behn's original work).
  According to the scholar Shane White, English theatre audiences had heard of the African Theatre because of British actor and comedian Charles Mathews, which had the ironic effect of boosting Aldridge's profile.  In a forerunner of blackface entertainment, Mathews had recently produced a popular comedic lampoon of what he imagined the African Theater was like (he had never actually been).  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 Aldridge introduced early in his career was a direct address to the audience on the closing night of his engagement at a gi
caption: Ira Aldridge as Mungo in The Padlock
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