[MORTON (Thomas)].
Theatre Royal, Newcastle....On Friday evening, March 16, 1838, will be performed...The Slave.
SURINAM IN NEWCASTLE
[MORTON (Thomas)].
Theatre Royal, Newcastle....On Friday evening, March 16, 1838, will be performed...The Slave.
UNRECORDED. The Slave was first performed at Covent Garden in November 1816.
A handbill for a provincial performance of Thomas Morton’s important abolitionist play The Slave - performed here in the year that full abolition was finally granted and just a couple of weeks before the author’s death.
The Slave which was first performed with William Macready playing the heroic black slave Gambia (later famously played by Ira Aldridge) who battles against vicious and duplicitous plantation owners to defend his fellow slave Zelinda and her love, the virtuous Englishman, Captain Clifton. The play is largely set in Surinam during the slave revolt.
This playbill is for a revival in Newcastle in 1838 - the same year in which full freedom was granted for slaves (in August 1838) which finally released hundreds of thousands of slaves who were still being held under the “apprenticeship” scheme outlined by the 1833 Slavery Act.
This rather tantalising playbill has a “Mr Aldridge” in the role of Captain Clifton but this is a member of the Newcastle Aldridge acting/musical family who appear on many handbills from this period rather than Ira Aldridge.
