Beginning with his autobiographical sketch, Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, The African Roscius follows Aldridge’s journey as a Black man who, “obtained and maintains among Europeans…a reputation whose acquisition demands the highest qualities of the mind and the noblest endowments of the person.” Making it a lifetime goal to use his success and influence to speak on the horrors of slavery in America and abroad; this memoir is addressed to what he hopes to be an enlighted reader, and details how he rose to fame as a Shakeperian actor in spite of the racism and prejudice he faced as a Black man in theater.
This edition also includes Aldridge’s 1847 translation of Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois’s Le Docteur Noir (The Black Doctor). At the age of forty, Aldridge adapted the play about a hidden romance between a formerly enslaved doctor and the daughter of a French aristocrat and was said to have brought dignity to a role that traditionally ended in tragedy for its bi-racial lead.
Together, these two pieces paint a stunning portrait of one of the first great Black actors. One part memoir and one part translation, The African Roscius is an exceptional piece of Black history professionally typeset and reimagined for modern readers.
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About the author
Ira Aldridge (1807 – 1867) was a Black actor, playwright and theater manager. Born free in New York, Aldridge had access to a proper education which allowed for exposure to the art of performance through Shakespearian productions put on by the African Theatre. Having developed a love for the stage, he began his acting career in the early 1820s with William Alexander Brown’s company, his first professional credits being his roles as Rolla from Richard Sheridan’s Pizarro and later as Romeo from Romeo and Juliet. However, after experiencing several violent protests from white neighbors, Aldridge realized that his ambitions would be limited in America and thus set out for London before his seventeenth birthday and shortly thereafter took to stage in a production of Othello making him the first African American to play the character, and possibly the first actor of African descent to do so. In the years that followed, Aldridge traveled throughout the different provinces in England gathering the attention of critics and the admiration of audiences; using his platform to speak directly to theatregoers about the horrors of slavery and racism across the United States, Africa and Europe. He took the roles of Zanga (from The Revenge), King Lear, and at the age of forty adapted the French play, The Black Doctor and brought dignity to a role that ended in tragedy for its bi-racial lead. So admired was his talent, that in his lifetime Aldridge continued to break down barriers and became the first African American to manage an English theater. The first in many respects, Ira Aldridge truly was the African Roscius and a symbol of perseverance in the face of racism and discrimination.
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