Description:This is a playbill for a production of Othello, performed at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham in 1846. The production starred renowned black actor Ira Aldridge, who was known as 'African Roscius.'
Aldridge was born in 1807 in New York. His love of the theatre began at an early age and his first role was as Rolla in Sheridan's Pizarro with the African Theatre. Due to the lack of opportunities available to black actors in the United States, Aldridge migrated to Britain in around 1824, it is believed as a servant to American actor Henry Wallack.
During the course of his career, Aldridge became famous playing a number of Shakespearean roles on stages across Britain and Europe including Othello, Richard III, Macbeth and King Lear. A hostile reception from the pro-slavery London press however, meant that the actor was kept off the London stage and he was forced to tour his wide repertoire of roles elsewhere.
A more favourable reception awaited Aldridge in Britain's other cities as well as Europe, and he was given accolades for his acting abilities in Switzerland, Germany and Russia. Aldridge was a versatile actor, playing slaves in abolitionist melodramas, numerous comic roles and performing other roles in whiteface as well as adopting an innovative approach to Shakespearean roles such as Aaron in Titus Andronicus and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. At a time when popular minstrel shows represented black people as comic figures through spoofed Shakespearean classics, Aldridge challenged these dominant representations through his performances with skill and gravity. The role of Shylock in particular was one that Aldridge was able to identify with as a result of his experience of racial discrimination, and gave voice to his tremendous talent. Of his performance, one critic observed that he
"…feels deeply the insults levelled at people of another colour by people of a white colour in the New World. In Shylock he does not see particularly a Jew, but a human being in general, oppressed by the age-old hatred shown towards people like him, and expressing this feeling with wonderful power and truth" (Marshall and Stock p. 234.)