WYTS: New York Giants. Original post here.
Does every single riot in American history have its route cause in
structural racism? No, but most of them do. Anyway, here’s a funny riot,
one that’s (mostly) not racist at all. “Funny” is relative because we
have somewhere between 20 and 30 deaths. Am I making light of this too soon? But how many riots
are about Shakespeare actor fandoms? Turns out that was a really big
deal back then, like how Swifties might murder you today if you say her
Toy Story 5 song is boring. This is the Astor Place Riot of 1849.
Astor
Place held held the stately opera house theater in Lower
Manhattan, designed in a Classical Revival style. It was a literal temple to
the arts. Built in 1847, this was where New York’s best and brightest, the “Uppertens”, as in upper ten thousand, would enjoy their theater, hopefully away from the
rabble. America was growing rapidly in the early 1800s and NYC was
booming too. In this era, we had some pretensions of genteel high
society, inspired by the English gentry. Class divisions extended
everywhere. Your Uppertens and middle class merchants supported the Whig
Party, which is really confusing if you know your Tories and Whigs from
England. (We get everything backwards in America.) The lower classes and immigrants had Tammany Hall's Democrats. The usually ruled the city and were violently angry to be out of power
right now. There was a brief blip of Whiggish mayors at the end of the 1840s. Anyway, these divisions
even extended to Bill Shakespeare.
William
Shakespeare wrote for the masses in the Elizabethan Era, and his
popular appeal had not dimmed centuries later in 1849. These shows were
mass entertainment. Hamlet was like Cats. Unfortunately, that meant that guys with silk hats had to be
in the same theater watching the same Othello with groundling dockworkers and
drunks sneering at the actors. Thus the Astor Place Opera House tried to
enforce some “class” in two meanings of that word. America had also not
yet won its Civ Cultural Victory over the planet, so we were very insecure
about our place versus England. People wanted to prove we were
just as good as them, no matter how un-posh our accents.
In that spirit, rose the first great American Shakespeare actor, Edwin
Forrest. He was young, energetic, and looked like Billy Joe Armstong.
He was good enough to tour the motherland, getting to meet William
Macready the Younger, one of the great English Shakespeare actors at the
time. The rivalry writes itself, you have the upstart hero, Forrest versus the European
snob, Macready. Somehow this also became an
Uppertens versus ramble question, with the hardscrabble gangs supporting
the American, and the high society figures such as Herman Melville
supporting Macready.
The friendship between
these two actors soured during Forrest’s second tour of England, where
he had worse reviews and felt he had been set up to fail by Macready.
And scandal of scandals, Macready did not invite Forrest over to his
house! The gossip rags went wild on this point, making a meal out of
Forrest vs Macready, USA vs England, Uppertens vs Bowery Boys, Whigs vs
Democrats, Astor Opera House vs Broadway. William Macready came to
Manhattan in 1849, and as if to push this rivalry to its limit, both men
decided to play Macbeth on the same night. The Macbeth Bowl was on.
Unfortunately,
Macready had a very bad show on May 7th. Maybe he was the better
Macbeth, but nobody could hear him over the din and jeers as gang members took over the fancy theater. Forrest’s
supporters paid extra to fill Astor Place and tossed everything they
could at the English actor. “Down with the codfish aristocracy!” came
some heckles. Macready was ready to flee the town, but was convinced by
New York’s best and brightest to try another show. This was a bad idea.
I’m hoping he was paid well. Everybody knew a riot was coming, the
militia were already in the town, the battle lines were drawn at the curtain rose.
May 10th, 1849, Macready must have
said “Macbeth” in the Astor Place Theater, because this show could not have
been more cursed. It was far worse than before. 10,000 people showed up
around the theater. It was so loud the cast only finished the show in
pantomime. The audience could not hear a word, but to the cast's credit, they
seem to have finished The Tragedy. Meanwhile, outside, the opera house
was under siege. The actors had to slip out in disguise, and the New
York militia was in battle with the mob. 70 cops were hurt, 250 people
in total injured, dozens dead. The police would be better-armed next
time there was a huge riot in the city, which was about once a decade in
this era. New Yorkers loved a good riot.
After
this Macbeth run, the press called Astor Place, “DisAstor Place” and
its reputation as a theater never recovered. It closed within a few
decades. Condos sit in its place today. William Macready never played in
America again. Edwin Forrest never played England again either. His career ended some years later due to gout and a real nasty divorce
scandal. Forrest whipped a writer in middle of Washington Square Park for
sleeping with his soon-to-be ex-wife. He was a colorful character.
Shakespeare,
however, is still going strong in Manhattan. I've seen Macbeth
performed in NYC myself, that was done by Patrick Stewart, and the crowd loved him. Hot take but I think Stewart's Macbeth was better than these other two.
