BLACKFACE
by Catherine Haill, V & A
East End theatre managers were keen to present successful West End attractions as quickly as possible. This included drama and entertainment featuring black characters, usually played by white actors who blacked their faces. A black face was a curiosity in the West End in the 19th century, but more common in the East End due to the number of West Indian African seamen. Many were destitute former slaves who settled there from the late 18th century onwards, having been given freedom in return for navy service. Their population grew throughout the century, with the opening of the West India Dock in 1802 and the East India Dock in 1806.
Black characters featured in several 18th century plays, some contributing to the debate about slavery, a fiercely-argued political topic until the abolition of the slave trade in Britain in 1807. They continued to draw audiences throughout the 19th century, and Dusty Bob and African Sal, characters from Moncrieff's 1821 hit Tom & Jerry based on real-life Londoners, were billed as an attraction in their own right at the Pavilion circus in 1828. In contrast to this dancing duo, the actor Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) fascinated audiences because he was an African American. He made his first London appearance in the East End, in May 1825 at the Royalty Theatre Whitechapel, as Othello. In October 1825 he played the enslaved West African Prince Oroonoko at the Coburg Theatre, billed as `Mr. Keene'. By April 1833 he starred at Covent Garden as Othello, and a month later was at the Pavilion, billed as `the African Roscius', playing Othello in mid-May, and two weeks later the vengeful Moorish Prince Zanga in Alonzo of Castile, a version of Young's play The Revenge. Aldridge's versatile repertoire encompassed comic and tragic parts, and white roles including Shylock and Macbeth. A good singer, he even accompanied himself on the guitar performing ballads and minstrel songs, some made famous by his contemporary T.D. Rice (1808-1860).
The white American Rice made a hit in New York in 1832 with his ragged black character Jim Crow, who sang and danced the extraordinary number `Jump Jim Crow'. Rice repeated his success in London in 1836, spawning Jim Crow characters in pantomime and burlesques, Jim Crow merchandise, and Jim Crow imitators on the stage. On his second London visit in 1838 Rice appeared at the Pavilion in Jumbo Jim, a farce written to incorporate his comic songs. However offensive Rice's act would appear today, it was universally popular then, and by the time the Jim Crow craze was starting to wane, the visit to London in 1843 of two American minstrels, Ned Harper and Joel Sweeney, started the fashion for black-face minstrel troupes that lasted throughout the century. Blacked-up minstrels made a living as street entertainers, in the makeshift East End theatres known as Penny Gaffs, and at the established East End theatres which regularly starred individual blacked-up performers such as E. W. Mackney (1825-1909), and minstrel troupes including the Mississippi Serenaders. When they appeared at the Pavillion in 1855, an image of minstrels playing the banjo and the bones appeared on the playbill.
Another theatrical craze featuring black characters that flourished on the East End stage was that for the play Uncle Tom's Cabin, based on the popular anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in America in 1852. A variety of stage versions appeared on both sides of the Atlantic, and had audiences cheering the fugitive slave Eliza escaping over the frozen river, smiling at the ragamuffin slave girl Topsy, and booing with rage when the villain bids for Uncle Tom, Eliza and the baby at a slave auction. The Britannia Theatre staged versions of the play in 1853 and 1854, while at the Pavilion Uncle Tom's Cabin was even a pantomime.
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Search Terms
Subject Terms: Blackface entertainers,Minstrel shows,Slavery,Slaves,Uncle Tom (Fictitious character),Indians of North America,East London Theatre Archive
