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1 results

  • Chapter 12 - How to Think Like Ira Aldridge

  • Edited by Ayanna Thompson, Arizona State University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race
    Published online:
    09 February 2021
    Print publication:
    25 February 2021, pp 175-189

  • Summary

    We remember Ira Aldridge today as the first black Shakespearean to achieve international professional renown. Indeed, he’s the first American actor to do so. Throughout his life Aldridge was lauded with awards. Born to free blacks in New York at the turn of the nineteenth century, naturalized as a British citizen in 1863, and buried in Łódź, Poland in 1867, Aldridge’s cosmopolitan life was marked by triumphs as well as persistent racist responses to his performances. His cosmopolitan career spanned three continents and countless theatres. This essay surveys seven of Ira Aldridge’s strategies for succeeding on the nineteenth-century stage: educate; emulate; circulate; nominate; innovate; disseminate; elaborate. Such strategies can still inspire us, students, performers, scholars, artists, teachers, and innovators alike.