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. 54 In its most generous interpretation,this claim was disingenuous.Possibly by this time, more than adecade after Hewlett s death, Aldridge even believed his own sto-ries.What Hewlett made of Aldridge s actions is not known, thoughhe can hardly have been happy about them.News of Aldridge sperformances in London in early October 1825 would have begunto filter through to New York in November, the month in whichHewlett was preparing to recommence his solo career.There is,perhaps, one indication of Hewlett s displeasure with Aldridge. SHAKESPEARE S PROUD REPRESENTATIVE 163For the first six or seven years of his acting career in EnglandAldridge used the name Mr.Keene rather than his own.(Per-haps Aldridge s eagerness to assume pieces of other people s lives,be it their pasts or their names, reflected the difficulties he hadbreaking into the theatrical business, but to the modern reader ex-propriations on the scale of Aldridge s suggest at the least an inse-curity, even a confusion regarding his own identity.)55 Hewlett sreturn to the stage on November 30, 1825, was, according to thenewspapers, supposed to be a one-time event; the New York Ga-zette and General Advertiser reported that he was soon to returnto London to fulfill his engagement at the Coburg, the theaterwhere Aldridge was then performing under the name of Keene.Inthe Commercial Advertiser, Hewlett s show in Greenwich was de-scribed as a sort of parting favor previously to his return to Lon-don to supply the place of Kean. If this item referred to EdmundKean, it is puzzling, because Edmund Kean was then touringAmerica and in fact had finished up in New York on the same dayas the reference to him was printed.The reference makes muchmore sense if Hewlett was talking about Aldridge, or Keene, andthat wording supply the place of Kean contains overtones ofa desire on Hewlett s part to assume his rightful place by reclaim-ing his past from Aldridge/Keene.56As far as we know, the two black actors never met to resolve anydifferences.Over the next two years Hewlett was constantly onthe verge of departing for England, but there is no record of hismaking the voyage.In January 1826 he was in Philadelphia, per-forming prior to his return to London, to fill his engagement atthe Cobourg Theatre ; in February he was advertising his lastappearance in Brooklyn, previous to his departure for London ;in late February he made his curtain call speech announcing that he would soon be in dat country vere dey hab no stinction ofcolor, but a month later he was still in New York, claiming that 164 STORIES OF FREEDOM IN BLACK NEW YORKthis grand entertainment would be positively the last night ofhis performance in this city. In late April and then again in lateMay he made further appearances at the same New York venue.InJuly 1826 Hewlett advertised his Farewell Benefit, only, a fewmonths later, to announce another Farewell Benefit for Sep-tember 28, 1826.In late January 1827 a notice in the New-YorkEnquirer stated that Hewlett, prior to his departure for London,(on the first of February farewell my native land,) will give hisImitations, but a little more than seven weeks after his promisedembarkation in the packet, the black performer was in Alexandria,Virginia.Still, in early December 1827 he was claiming that ashow at the New York Military Hall would be his last perfor-mance prior to his departure to England, to fulfil his engagementthere. 57Hewlett s threats of imminent departure may have beenmerely marketing ploys, but the air of abandonment that markedhis dialect farewell speech, or even, on another occasion, thevisit to Noah to tell him he was about to leave the country, suggestthat there was more to it than that.From this distance, Hewlett sindecisiveness seems to be part of a broader pattern.For a secondtime, someone in London had done him wrong.He had crossedthe Atlantic to pursue Mathews in 1824, but without success acurious failure, since Mathews was performing constantly andcould not have been difficult to locate.But later, faced withAldridge s duplicity, Hewlett did not even make it that far.Per-haps he shied away from personal confrontation with either man.Perhaps, venerating England and English actors as he did, and forall his undoubted ability, he feared that he might fail on the Eng-lish stage, a defeat that would have been made all the more humil-iating because of the younger Aldridge s achievements.What isclear is that Hewlett s failure to achieve any measure of success, oreven to try to break onto the English stage, severely restricted his SHAKESPEARE S PROUD REPRESENTATIVE 165development as an actor.Performing solo undoubtedly had its at-tractions it gave Hewlett scope to display the range of his talentsas an actor and singer but could never earn either the cachet oreven the thrill that would come from starring in a full-scale dra-matic production in a famous and enthusiastically received play.With the exception of Mathews, the stars whom Hewlett imitatedperformed alongside other actors in plays, and until he could dothe same he would always be left wondering just how talented he,a black man, was at these supposedly higher levels of perfor-mance.In England, Aldridge had managed to appear on stagealongside white actors with remarkably little fuss being madeabout his color, but Hewlett could never enjoy the same opportu-nity in New York.As slavery wound down, racial tension was ris-ing and segregation of the city s blacks was increasing.In this con-text, the idea of a black actor interacting on stage with whiteactors, particularly women, was all but unthinkable.In the scanty record that survives of these years, there are indi-cations that Hewlett felt this deprivation keenly.It is intrigu-ing that he was particularly drawn to the character of the trick-ster Richard III.His interest in this manipulative character wasshared, albeit to a lesser degree and probably for different reasons,by many other New Yorkers; throughout the 1820s, Shakespeare stragedy was immensely popular in the metropolis and elsewherein the nation.An irascible theater critic for the New York Americancomplained, in 1827, of the numerous tiresome repetitions ofRichard by tragedians and comedians, repetitions that had ren-dered watching the play a task; and if the performer is not abovemediocrity the task is exceedingly irksome. 58 But the critic wasout of step with a public which continued to flock to all manner ofproductions of the great tragedy.Richard III was certainly at thecenter of Hewlett s career
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