4 - Playing Independently

Summary

Aldridge had toured with Seymour and his troupe because it was the easiest way for him to earn a living. Ireland did not have enough permanent theaters to keep him employed in a succession of short-term engagements for an entire year. Also, teaming up with a touring company spared him the trouble of trying to secure work on his own. As his letter to MacDonnell in Cork indicates, Aldridge did not employ an agent to make bookings for him. Yet the very fact that he wrote to MacDonnell suggests that he was by now dissatisfied with the arrangement he had with Seymour and wanted to break loose from the routine of performing week after week with the same group of actors. He desired more independence, more opportunity to determine his own working conditions and to chart his own future as a performer.

One of his first ventures in a new direction occurred in Carrick-on-Suir on June 9, 1835, when he delivered an “opening Dramatic lecture” followed by a recitation of Genevra [sic], the singing of “Opossum up a Gum Tree” and “Gentle Zitella” (from Planché's The Brigand), and an enactment of speeches from Othello. This was not unlike the medley of performances he gave on his benefit nights to demonstrate the range of his talents as a tragedian, comedian, singer, and dancer, but there was one feature that was different—the “lecture on the beauties of the drama.” This held the performance together, giving each of its disparate pieces a place as an illustration of a larger argument on the art of mimesis.

“Gentle Zitella,” also known as “Love's Ritornella,” had become a popular hit after it was sung by James Wallack, who played Massaroni, the Italian Robin Hood, in the opening production of J. R. Planché's musical melodrama The Brigand at Drury Lane on November 18, 1829. According to Godfrey Wordsworth Turner, the song “took the town by storm. Everywhere ‘Gentle Zitella’ was sung, played, hummed, whistled.” Aldridge may have first heard it during the time he was in London from December 1829 to February 1830, performing at Sadler's Wells, the Royal Pavilion, and the Royal Olympic.