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Wednesday, January 12, 2022
The Black Doctor
Act 1
- Originally written by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois
• Adapted by Ira Aldridge for English stage
- Aldridge played Fabian
- Fabian is a former slave and is the “black doctor”
• He uses strength and medical knowledge to save many lives
- One of these is the life of white aristocrat Pauline
- Pauline and Fabian fall in love
• She tracks him down bc he has disappeared to give him gold for his services because he
initially refused payment
- She tells him she has seen a strange man near her house
• We learn that this is Fabian who has been doing this bc he loves her
- Pauline’s mixed-race foster sister is in love with a white clerk
• Pauline says she will help her sister marry him in spite of racial prejudices and. Fabian
begins to have hope for them
- Fabian learns that Pauline has been betrothed to St. Luce
• He takes her to a grotto by the sea hoping the ocean will kill them both when the tide comes
in
• Pauline confesses she has loved him forever when she learns she will die
- Fabian takes her to a rock and they get saved by a passing ship
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Act 2
- House of pauline’s fam
- Her mom actually isn’t dead
- Fabian and Pauline have been secretly married
• He is officially employed to her fam as a servant
- Her mom thinks v little of him
- Mom wants Pauline to marry St Luce so she can be a lady of honor to the queen
• This is assumably Marie antionette
• Pauline tries to take poison rather than abandon Fabian
- He takes the poison from her and flees the room
Act 3
- Bastille storming of 1789
• St luce and fabian are both in diff cells of the Bastille
- St Luce SUCKS
• He is stuck up and is pissy bc he can’t have luxuries in prison
- Fabian has been living in misery trying to communicate with his friend Andre to get news of
what’s happening outside
• They free the prisoners but it is too late as Fabian has fallen into insanity bc he thinks
Pauline is dead
Act 4
- Time jump to 1793
- Reign of Terror
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- Pauline is considered an enemy of the people bc she’s responsible for the crimes against
Fabian
• He is now revered
- Andre has been taking care of fabian bc he is still insane
- Pauline is gonna get killed by the mob until Fabian sees her
• He sees her and we think she might be saved but then he sees St Luce beside her and a
portrait of the Marchioness, her mother
- He believes the marchioness is still alive and denies being Paulines husband due to not
wanting to enrage her mother
• Someone in the mob fires a gun t pauline and fabian throws himself in front of the
bullet
- He produces proof of their marriage with his dying strength and saves pauline
THE END
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