Stage Struck
THE OVERLOOK
By Tom Clavin
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“Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.”
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
The combination of an anniversary and the kerfuffle about the Golden Globes as well as the announcement that Broadway will be back in September inspires me to write about the Astor Place Riots, which occurred 172 years ago this week.
In the late 1840s, when unlike today there were few actors to go around in New York, the ones who were stars amassed an immensely loyal following. At the same time, also unlike today, audiences treated theaters as places to make their feelings known, and not just towards the actors. Before the Civil War, the American theater was dominated by British actors and managers, with William Charles Macready “the haughty lion of the London stage,” as described by Nigel Cliff in his book The Shakespeare Riots. But the rise of Edwin Forrest as the first American star and the fierce partisanship of his supporters was an early sign of a home-grown American entertainment business.
Both Forrest and Macready, of course, were specialists in Shakespeare. The Bard’s plays were not just the favorites of the educated. Even in gold-rush California, miners whiled away the harsh winter months by sitting around campfires and acting out Shakespeare's plays from memory. His works were well known throughout every stratum of society. And they became fertile ground for a dispute between Macready and Forrest. In fact, their initial friendship became a virulent theatrical rivalry. The question of who was the greater actor became a notorious bone of contention in the British and the American press, which filled columns with discussions of their respective merits. There was also a class struggle between immigrant groups who largely supported Forrest and the largely Anglophile upper classes who supported Macready. The two actors became figureheads for the Great Britain and the U.S. relationship.
Macready and Forrest each toured the other's country twice, performing mostly Shakespeare. On Macready's second visit to America, Forrest had taken to pursuing him around the country and appearing in the same plays to challenge him. Given the tenor of the time, most newspapers supported the "home-grown" star Forrest. On Forrest's second visit to London, he was less popular than on his first trip, and he claimed that Macready had maneuvered against him. He went to a performance of Macready playing Hamlet and loudly hissed him. For his part, Macready had announced that Forrest was without "taste.”
The ensuing scandal followed Macready on his third and last trip to America, where half the carcass of a dead sheep was thrown at him on the stage. The climate worsened when Forrest instigated divorce proceedings against his English wife for immoral conduct, and the verdict came down against Forrest on the day that Macready arrived in New York for his farewell tour. Forrest's connections were substantial with working people and the gangs of New York: He had made his debut at the Bowery Theatre, which had come to cater mostly to a working class audience, drawn largely from the violent, immigrant-heavy Five Points neighborhood of lower Manhattan a few blocks to the west. Forrest's muscular frame and impassioned delivery were deemed admirably "American" by his working-class fans, especially compared to Macready's more subdued and genteel style. (Well, he had taste.)
Wealthier theatergoers, to avoid mingling with the immigrants and the Five Points crowd, had built the Astor Place Opera House near the junction of Broadway and the Bowery. With its dress code of kid gloves and white vests, the very existence of the Astor Opera House was taken as a provocation by those Americans for whom the theater was traditionally the gathering place for all classes. Macready was scheduled to appear in Macbeth at the Opera House, which was operating with the name Astor Place Theatre. Forrest was scheduled to perform Macbeth on the same night only a few blocks away at the huge Broadway Theater.
On May 7, 1849, Forrest's supporters bought hundreds of tickets to the top level of the Astor Place Theatre and, according to press reports, brought Macready's performance of Macbeth to a grinding halt by throwing at the stage rotten eggs, potatoes, apples, lemons, shoes, bottles of “stinking liquid,” and ripped-up seats. The performers persisted in the face of hissing, groans and cries of "Shame, shame!" and "Down with the codfish aristocracy!" However, they were forced to perform in pantomime as they could not make themselves heard over the crowd. Meanwhile, at Forrest's performance that same night, the audience rose and cheered when Forrest spoke Macbeth's line, "What rhubarb, senna or what purgative drug will scour these English hence?”
After his disastrous performance, Macready announced his intention to leave for England on the next boat, but he was persuaded to stay and perform again by a petition signed by 47 well-heeled New Yorkers – including authors Herman Melville and Washington Irving.
On May 10, Macready once again took the stage as Macbeth. Already, police chief George Washington Matsell had informed Caleb Woodhull, the new Whig mayor, that there was not sufficient manpower to quell a serious riot, so Woodhull called out the militia. General Charles Sandford assembled the state's Seventh Regiment in Washington Square Park to back up the 100 policemen outside the theater. Additional policemen were assigned to protect the nearby homes of the city's the wealthy and elite.
All this might not be enough. Tammany Hall man Captain Isaiah Rynders was a fervent backer of Forrest and had been one of those behind the mobilization against Macready on May 7. He was determined to embarrass the newly ensconced Whig powers so he distributed handbills and posters in saloons and restaurants across the city, inviting working men and patriots to show their feelings about the British, asking, "Shall Americans or English Rule This City?" Free tickets were handed out to Macready's show that evening.
By the time the play began, there may have been as many as 10,000 people in the streets around the theater. One of the most prominent among those who supported Forrest's cause was Ned Buntline, a dime novelist who was Rynders's chief assistant. (Shameless plug: He is one of the more colorful characters in my book Dodge City.) Buntline and his followers had set up relays to bombard the theater with stones and they fought running battles with the police. They and others inside tried (but failed) to set fire to the building. Even though the audience was in a state of siege, Macready managed to finish the play then slipped out of the theater in disguise.
Fearing they had lost control of the city, the authorities called out the troops, who arrived at 9:15, only to be jostled, attacked, and injured. Finally, the soldiers lined up and opened fire, first into the air and then several times at point blank range into the crowd. Many of those killed were innocent bystanders, and almost all of the casualties were from the working class. (Seven of the dead were Irish immigrants.) Dozens of injured and dead were laid out in nearby saloons and shops, and the next morning mothers and wives combed the streets and morgues for their loved ones.
The next night, May 11, a meeting was called in City Hall Park which was attended by thousands, with speakers crying out for revenge against the authorities whose actions they held responsible for the fatalities. During the melee, a young boy was killed. An angry crowd headed up Broadway toward Astor Place and fought running battles with mounted troops from behind improvised barricades, but this time the authorities quickly got the upper hand.
All told, the Astor Place Riots left between 22 and 31 dead and more than 120 people injured. The riots resulted in the largest number of civilian casualties due to military action in the U.S. since the Revolutionary War. The Astor Opera House did not survive its reputation as the "Massacre Opera House" at "DisAstor Place," as burlesques and minstrel shows called it. It began another season, but soon gave up the ghost, the building eventually going to the New York Mercantile Library. The elite's need for an opera house was met with the opening of the Academy of Music, farther uptown at 15th Street and Irving Place, away from the working-class precincts and the rowdiness of the Bowery.
Another connection to today: According to Nigel Cliff in The Shakespeare Riots, the violence furthered the process of class alienation and segregation in New York City and America. As part of that process, the entertainment world separated into "respectable" and "working-class" orbits. As professional actors gravitated to respectable theaters and vaudeville houses responded by mounting skits on "serious" Shakespeare, Shakespeare was gradually removed from popular culture into a new category of highbrow entertainment.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including his latest collaboration with Bob Drury, “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” published last month by St. Martin’s Press. At last glance, it was #8 on the New York Times bestseller list. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or BN.com to purchase a copy.