Aldridge returned to London early in April 1855. He fell ill and rested for four months before resuming his career as an itinerant performer in the British Isles for the next twenty-one months. A rumor that he had been engaged for six months at Drury Lane Theater in London proved to be untrue. Instead, he began his new campaign in Plymouth, where playbills and newspaper advertisements heralded his reappearance in England after three remarkable years abroad

He was scheduled to appear for ten nights in a variety of Shakespearean roles (Othello, Shylock, Macbeth, Richard III, King Lear) as well as in a number of melodramatic and farcical roles (Gambia in The Slave; Bertram in Bertram; or, The Castle of St. Aldobrand; Karfa in Obi; or, Three-Fingered Jack; Alambra in Paul and Virginia; Mungo in The Padlock; Ginger Blue in The Virginian Mummy) that had been staples in his repertoire in earlier tours of Britain.