The first black Shakespearean actor performs in Hull, the bastion of the anti-slavery movement

Ira Frederick Aldridge became the first black actor to play Othello. His first major performance of Othello was at London’s Royalty Theatre in 1826.

Ira paid homage to the famous actor Kean by taking his name, but with a slightly different spelling – Keene – in order to attract attention.

He also called himself 'African Roscius', after a famous Roman actor of the first century BC.

This playbill is one of the many thousands stored in the British Library, telling a story of the performances of Shakespeare’s work across the country.

Dated 1829, this particular playbill is working hard to attract spectators to enjoy the novelty of seeing a black actor perform. After all, the prestigious Theatre Royal, Covent Garden has engaged him for the next season…

"...or so he claims", says Hannah Manktelow, "as he didn’t actually perform there until 1833! These sorts of claims were fairly common - not outright lies but perhaps optimistic statements." Hannah is our playbills expert, a PhD researcher from the University of Nottingham who is working with the British Library on how Shakespeare’s plays have been performed outside London from 1769 onwards.

In the meantime too, according to the playbill, he has just gone down a storm in the theatres of Bath, Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool, Norwich, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Now he’s opening with his Othello for the first of three nights in Hull.

Taken from Hull Packet and Humber Mercury, June 9th, 1829 – quote taken from Ira Aldridge: The Early Years, 1807 – 1833 by Bernth Lindfors, University of Rochester Press:

Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Othello himself, as Shakespeare has created him…quiet, reserved, classic and majestic

French poet and novelist Théophile Gautier describing Ira Aldridge.

“We attended the theatre impressed with an idea that the playing of the part of Othello, by a native African - or at least by one born of African parents, and bearing an African complexion of the purest and deepest tint – would turn out to be what is sometimes called in theatrical parlance “a gag”. We were agreeably disappointed. Mr Keene, although positively a negro, is a gentleman and a man of education, and could not have pourtrayed (sic) the character in a stile (sic) much more intellectual, then if his face had been “as white as unsunned snow”.

Hull was the home of anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce and thanks to his efforts the slave trade had been abolished in 1807.

Some writers feel that audiences would have been rooting for the young actor, especially around the 1830s when Wilberforce was leading the fight for the abolition of slavery in the colonies.

However, it wasn’t until about four years after this playbill was published, in 1833, that an act was passed giving freedom to all slaves in the British Empire.

Aldridge returned to Hull many times in the years that followed.

He liked to try out new roles there, including his first white Shakespearean parts: King Lear, Shylock, Macbeth and Richard III in Hull in 1832, for which it is believed he wore pale make-up and a wig.

He had long runs in 1831, 1832 and 1833 then briefer engagements in 1834 and throughout the 1840s and 1850s.

In the 1840s he visited his friend, a former touring buddy James Joseph Sheahan, who would later become the city’s archivist and local historian.

Aldridge had come a long way from when he’d emigrated to England from New York in 1807.

After his performance as Othello in Scarborough he was described as an “actor of genius.”