14 - Dublin

Summary

According to his Memoir, Aldridge had not been invited to perform in Dublin.

Notwithstanding the favourable impression “the African Kean,” as he was then termed, made wherever he appeared, he repeatedly failed in procuring an engagement at Dublin. Mr. Calcraft, the spirited and accomplished manager of the Theatre Royal, could not be prevailed upon by letter to accept the services of the man of colour, at a venture: there was “something so absurd about it.” Mr. Aldridge, therefore, went there at his own cost, and had an interview with the manager. The result was favourable to his ambition, and he was engaged “for a limited number of nights,” as the saying goes, establishing a popularity which has never since abated.

Edmund Kean had been previously secured to appear at this theatre; and the management endeavoured to disuade [sic] Mr. Aldridge from taking the part of Othello, as the celebrated tragedian was known to complain if his favourite characters were played just previously to his acting them himself. Mr. Aldridge was urged to come forward as Zanga, but he persisted in playing Othello, and had his way.

All this happened in December 1831, less than a week after he had left Sheffield, and Calcraft's gamble in presenting, as he put it in the playbill, “the most singular novelty in the Theatrical world … THE CELEBRATED AFRICAN ROSCIUS (THE ACTOR OF COLUUR [sic]) … to gratify the Patrons of the Theatre,” paid off handsomely, for Aldridge turned out to be a smash hit.

Members of the press admitted they had been skeptical of this experiment and were prepared to condemn it but had been won over by the unexpected brilliance of the African Roscius's acting. The Comet admitted that

like most other plain folk, we had screwed our courage up to the sticking point that no man of colour could do the Moore [sic] of Venice justice. We actually put all our panoply of war in requisition for the night's venture to the critics’ benches, determined to make a bold stand against this invasion of the Child of a Tropical Sun upon the territories of the fair-haired Saxons of the sock and buskin…. Well, the Play commenced in good time: we heard the Roscius utter his first speech, and—whew!—away flew all our pre conceived notions and prejudices.