March 14, 2020 • 25 mins
This 2011 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina covers an often-requested topic. Shakespeare is typically associated with cultural sophistication rather than violent bouts of near-anarchy. But this wasn't the case during the Astor Place Riot.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, Happy Saturday, everybody. A couple of weeks ago, somebody
asked on Twitter whether we would think about doing a
podcast on the Astra Place riot. Well, good news, previous
hosts have already done that for you, so we're going
to share that one today. This originally came out January
five eleven from previous hosts Sarah and Bablina Enjoy Welcome
(00:26):
to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Sarah Dowdy and I'm delayed Chocolate Boarding. And a while ago,
in fact, right around Halloween, Katie and I talked about
the Macbeth Curse, which is a pretty interesting, spooky subject.
(00:52):
And I mean, there are lots of incidents of the Macbeth,
the supposed McBeth curse, but one that we mentioned was
the Astra Place riot, and it's considered the worst, most
violent theatrical riot in American history. And I thought about
it again recently after reading Dan simmons book drewd and Um.
In it, William Charles McCready is actually a character and
(01:14):
the story of this riot is recounted, and it kind
of piqued my interest. Yeah, it has a lot of
bizarre elements in it. We're going to look at theater
history a little bit, the lives of these two famous
actors who were sort of opposites, and British American forg
relations in the eighteen hundreds, and the early American class
(01:35):
tensions and even some Tammany hall politics. But the best
part of it, we're looking at all of that in
the context of a riot. So, I mean, it's pretty exciting.
And um, I guess just to kick us off, we'll
go through our play bill and introduce the two main
players in this drama. One is a British intellectual and
the other is a rugged American. Right well, the British
(01:58):
intellectual is William Charles McCready, and in eighteen forty nine
May of that year actually he was in the United
States to perform a farewell engagement at Manhattan's finest theater,
which was the Astor Place Opera House. McCready at this
time was considered an intellectual actor, but one with a
lot of intensity, and despite his aristocratic reputation and popularity
(02:21):
with the finer sorts, finer classes, he had gotten into
acting because he didn't have enough money to go to
law school. Yeah, so he had a humble element to
his origins, which is conveniently forgotten later in this podcast.
But at this point McCready was far along in his
theatrical career. He's fifty six years old. I mean, after all,
this is his farewell tour and he's a huge success.
(02:44):
He had played every major role. Uh. He debuted as Romeo,
he played Hamlet, Iago lear Othello, Richard the Third, but
he was most famous for his Macbeth. It was his
signature role, and he's also known for his decide at
ideas about how theater should be done. While managing two
of London's finest theaters, drew Rey Lane and Covent Garden,
(03:07):
McCready was able to establish new expectations for productions. So
he introduced things that were kind of revolutionary at the time.
Actors would rehearse together, which seems obvious nowadays, but I
guess they used to rehearse individually before. Yeah. At the time,
I almost feel like a play was more about going
to see the big soliloquies with your favorite stars, and
so they would learn their lines in private and interpret
(03:30):
them however they wanted, and then come together and you
have to imagine the end product would be sort of
a mishmash, right, So McCready changed that and he made
it more similar to what it is today, people rehearsing together.
He also wanted the costumes to be more historically accurate,
and the sets and props would complement the plays. And
(03:50):
probably most importantly, he revolutionized the way that Shakespeare was performed,
because up until this point they would perform korl did
versions of these what seemed to us um like plays
you could never touch, you know, why would you want
to mess with Shakespeare? But at the time, like King
(04:10):
Lear had a happy ending, a hundred and fifty years
of King Lear with a happy ending, I don't really
see the point. I don't even know how you do that.
But I guess McCready didn't see the point of something
like that either, And so at his houses when they
did Shakespeare, they would do Shakespeare. It might be shortened,
but it wouldn't be a corrupted version. Yeah. And in
the United States there were also some major shakeups going
(04:32):
on in the way Shakespeare was performed at that time
as well, and it was all because of a guy
named Edwin Forrest, who was an actor thirteen years McReady's jr.
And a protege of Edmund Keane, who was regarded generally
as the greatest English actor of his time. And forest
emotionally intense frank performance of Othello in New York City
in eighty six had made his name, and like McCready,
(04:55):
also brought that same intensity to his roles and rugged
good looks helped him as well a little bit. Yeah,
he was very all American, and uh it ultimately made
him a hero of the Shakespeare loving working classes, which
at the time everybody loved Shakespeare. I mean it was
common reading. It was common for working class people to
(05:17):
have Shakespeare partially memorized and to entertain each other by
reciting soliloquies. Um. But just because Forest has impressed a
large part of the American theater going population, some of
the critics were less impressed, and the New York Tribune
critic William Winter rights this really scathing commentary and calls
(05:41):
Forest quote a vast animal bewildered by a grain of genius.
That was harsh cutting. William Winter definitely well. One thing,
there was something that the two men had in common,
the British and the American. They both had an interest
in national play rights. Yeah, I mean, we think of
nineteen country British literature as a time of great novels.
(06:02):
But McCready really wanted people to focus on play, so
he was encouraging writers of his time in his country
to write more plays and get out there and focus
on that. Forest. Meanwhile, set up a contest for the
writing of American plays, and he gets some that he likes,
John Augusta Stone's Metamora and Robert montgomery Birds Gladiator, which
(06:26):
was considered the beginning of native, homegrown American drama. Yeah,
and forest ideal out of all of this was to
have American theater free itself from English plays. I mean,
I'm sure he didn't entirely want to do away with
someone like Shakespeare, but really have its own identity. So
it's easy to see where this is going. It's easy
(06:47):
to see how a professional rivalry between two men of
such great stature in their own countries would develop, and
they did become professional rivals. And the rift apparently stamped
from forest tour of England in the eighteen thirties. He
hissed during one of McCready's London place and yeah, it's
(07:09):
very rude and um. Some accounts said that that was
due to a misunderstanding, but I never found anything that
provided further explanation than that, And I have a hard
time imagining how you would accidentally hiss someone at a play.
And Forest pretty much defended his actions, so all McCready
was left to do was pretty much dismissed the whole thing.
(07:31):
And he also wrote about how annoying and trivial this
whole situation was in his diaries, so he didn't really
strike back per se, but he definitely expressed his displeasure. Yeah,
we can imagine Forest saying I have a right to
him if I want, while McCready is just so annoyed
by the whole the whole story and anything taking attention
(07:52):
away from what's really going on the play. Yeah, but
Forest followers were really devoted to him, and they saw
macready style as um not emotionally intense enough. It was
intellectual and cold. It wasn't their cup of tea. And
so this back and forth feud begins between the followers
(08:13):
of these two men, and it could be anything from
um Forest followers causing troubled you know, causing disturbances that
McCready's plays hissing or cat calling to m macready's followers,
making sure that the finest London literary society was closed. Forest.
So just getting at each other, the followers, just bickering
(08:37):
back and forth for years. There's more to it than
just the acting aspect to it was also about what
the men stood for, and we've mentioned a little bit
of that. It was the obvious national breakdown, McCready being English,
(08:59):
Forest being American. It's the eighteen forties, but there's still
some Anglo American tensions left over from the American Revolution
and the War of eighteen twelve, so that stuff hadn't
entirely disappeared. Yeah, that's hanging over over this whole story.
But it's also about class and McCready is the favorite
actor of the elite and the New York aristocracy that
(09:23):
just love everything about English society. And according to the
theater professor Bruce McConochie, the Forest propaganda actually called McCready
the pet of princes, which is that's pretty cruel, isn't
it um Whereas Forest had this bold style and these
tammany hall connections, and he's of course the favorite of
(09:45):
the working man. So it's a it's a class division. Yeah,
and I mean I think it was put well by
forest biographer Richard A. Moody. He said, no other actor
could churn up the emotions of the American audiences as
four rested with his stormy kind of renderings of Shakespeare's
tragic heroes, or his passionate, patriotic impersonation of any one
(10:07):
of a half dozen freedom loving zeal It's struggling against
tyrannical oppression. So kind of a long quote, but I
think it expresses the way working class people identified with forests.
It express this forest effect on them too. Um So
clearly more is at stake than who's your favorite actor.
And the newspapers label this rivalry the rich against the poor,
(10:29):
so we can see where this is going, definitely fueling it.
So you'd think that promoters wouldn't go looking for trouble
in this heated scenario by staging these two men playing
the same role in the same city on the same night,
But that's exactly what ends up happening. Yeah. So in
early May, there are two placards all over New York City.
(10:52):
One advertisers McCready at the Astro Place Opera House playing Macbeth.
The other advertisers forest at the Broadway Theater in playing
with that. Um. But the managers are hoping. They're not
expecting a riot to come out of this. They're just
hoping that they'll sell all their tickets and pack their
houses and maybe people get a little stirred up. Yeah,
(11:13):
I mean I can see that logic too, But they
start to realize that that's not necessarily the case. When
a manager for Astro Place goes out and gives away
some free tickets on May nine, the day of the show,
and when he returns to the opera house, he finds
out that most of them have already been snatched up.
He suspects that it wasn't all macready fans who wanted
(11:34):
these tickets he was giving away. Yeah, he's smell in
trouble here, and so he asked the chief police for
protection at the show, just in case anything goes down. Um.
So it's the afternoon of the play and the crowd
starts building in front of the theater long before the
doors are set to open, and when they finally do open,
(11:54):
there's just a rush to get in. And I can
imagine going in the doors if you're regular theater goer,
at this time and looking around, it's not the normal
crowd for astor place. The regulars are in their boxes,
but the floor is packed with these tough looking men,
and some are wearing shirt sleeves of you know, horror,
(12:15):
and all of them are wearing their hats indoors and
it seems like, I mean, that would be menacing. Something
is up, something's going to happen. But they're all quiet
and their patient. They're just waiting, but they're also obviously
communicating with each other with these secret signals, perhaps jokes. Yeah,
some jokes get thrown around. Um, so it's um, something's
(12:39):
going to happen, right, So then we have showtime at
about seven thirty, when the play is about to start,
they start stomping. It's something called a tramp warning. Normally
it would die off, but in this case it starts
to get louder. The theater and its chandeliers start to shake. Yeah,
And when the play goes on, there are cheers from
(13:01):
the boxes from these regular theater goers, these regular MacCready fans,
but they're hisses and cat calls and cock crows from
everyone else and kind of imagining different versions of the
arrest development cock crows. Um McCready is drowned out when
he tries to start speaking his lines, and he reacts
(13:23):
pretty impressively to this. I would say, at first, he
just folds his arms and he waits, you know, expecting
that people start to get a little embarrassed and maybe
it'll die out and they can't keep it up forever, Right,
he'll be able to continue his performance. Then he stalks
the stage in front of the footlights, and I mean,
this is a man who sort of got his start
(13:44):
playing villains, melodramatic villains. So I imagine he's got a
great face, a great villainous face, and I imagine he's
throwing it at the crowd as he stalks the footlights.
And then finally he just tries to outshout them, and
he gets part way through the act that way, even
though nobody can hear him. The cries are completely drowning
about Poor lady Macbeth enters and people shout obscenities at her,
(14:09):
so she basically flees the stage. Yeah, it's just getting
worse and worse instead of getting better. People thought maybe
if a lady was on stage, the crowd might have
a little more respect, but that's not quite what happens. Actually,
projectiles start coming at the stage at that point, for
potatoes than rotten eggs. Then a chair at McCready's head.
(14:33):
According to Joel Tyler, he leaves eight seventy three account
someone shouts, go off the stage, you English fool. Who
three cheers for ned Forest Yeah, And then another chair
comes and so at this point McCready is worried he
will be killed and this will be his final tour
and his final performance of Macbeth. So he leaves the
(14:54):
stage and the curtain comes down, and that seems like
should have been the end of this story. Unfortunately it's not. Um.
Theater riots weren't terribly uncommon during this time. People would
riot over things like I thought the play was bad,
or I thought the music was bad. Um. But this
was going pretty far, and McCready certainly thought so, and
(15:18):
he resolved to cancel the engagement go back to England
on the next ship. But his American friends convinced some otherwise. Yeah,
they actually published a petition about it. They UM published this.
It said to W. C. McCready, esquire, Dear Sir the undersigned,
having heard that the outrage at the Astor Place Opera
(15:41):
House on Monday evening is likely to have the effect
of preventing you from continuing your performances and from concluding
your intended farewell engagement on the American stage. Take this
public method of requesting you to reconsider your decision and
of assuring you that the good sense and respect for
order prevailing in this community will sustain you on the
subsequent nights of your performances. So pretty strong recommendation to
(16:04):
stay or please evacuous. Yep, exactly forty seven people sign this,
among them Washington, Irving and Herman Melville. And so McCready agrees.
I mean, if Washington, Rman and Herman Melville ask you
to do something, yeah, definitely. So he decides to perform
(16:31):
may tenth the same play again at Astor Place. Yeah.
But as soon as the placards go up to advertise
this return of the McCready engagement, other placards appear, and
these ones are advertising Forest playing the character of the
gladiator in the Broadway theater on the same night. Now
that we know about gladiators, wondering if he had to
(16:52):
put on a little book a little bit that one. Um,
But there's another placard that goes up to and this
one is a lot more dangerous. It's I mean, this
is in all caps. You can actually see this placard.
Maybe I'll post it on Twitter or Facebook. Um, but
it says working men shall Americans or English rule in
this city. The crew of the British teamer have threatened
(17:15):
all Americans who shall dare to offer their opinions this
night at the English Aristocratic Opera House working men, freemen
stand up to your lawful rights. So pretty serious. They're
insinuating that if you go protest at the Macready performance,
English sailors will attack you. I mean yeah, I mean
(17:38):
strong stuff. Before people assumed maybe it might go off, Okay,
this time there was no question. It's gonna make people
angry reading that there's gonna be trouble. And so in
this case, the police are already plugged in. They're they're
expecting some sort of trouble to go down this time,
and they're actually already inside of the ask Replace Opera
(18:00):
House when the doors open. And so when the doors open,
instead of this crowd rushing in, um, only ticket holders
are allowed. Um. A few ruffians still get in to
make a little trouble. But then the theater is locked,
it's barricaded, the windows are all barricaded, and everything is
ready for the show. Um. Still some of the people
(18:21):
who made it in start their tramporning, and I just
I can't imagine why you would go to this play
imagining being locked and barricaded inside the theater. Yeah, you'd
have to be a big fan. You would have to
be a super fan, a major. I mean, it was
this final tour, I guess. So there's motivation to go,
and the petition and every kill that the theater be
(18:42):
killed at the theater as death by theater. But the
crowd worse than the crowd inside, and the few that
had gotten in. The crowd outside was the part that's
really intimidating. It had gotten enormous, some estimates put it
at about ten thousand to fifteen thousand people, and they
knocked out the street lamps, they threw stones, they tried
to break down the doors. Um, and the police actually
(19:03):
had to start worrying about an actual attack on mc cready. Yeah,
it seemed like there would be an attack from the
few people inside. And once they saw signs that an
attack might be made that they might try to snatch
him off the stage. They started arresting a few of
the rioters who were inside the theater, and supposedly this
further insights the people outside if they get wind of this.
(19:26):
But after a time and McCready continues to act. After
a time he leaves the stage. He sneaks out through
a private door, supposedly disguised as an officer on horseback,
and escapes back to his hotel with friends. Um gets
out of it before it gets any worse, so the
performances over. Basically, then the militia has to arrive. The
(19:52):
rioters rush at the cavalry, driving them into retreat. The
infantry is battered by stones, and eventually it seems like
they're going to have to retreat or fire crowd. And
there we should say to they're all of these paving
stones ready because there's a construction site nearby, so it's
like unlimited projectiles for the rioters, conveniently enough. But yeah. Eventually,
(20:13):
Commanding Officer Major General Charles Sandford gives the order to
charge bayonet, but because the troops and the crowd are
in such close quarters, there's no room to charge, so
some of the crowd actually sees the soldiers muskets, and
there are repeated warnings. Nobody really wants to open fire
on this crowd, um, repeated warnings to disperse or they'll
(20:37):
have to shoot. Finally, the sheriff gives the order to
fire blanks over the crowd's head. Because they realize their
blanks and they're going over their heads. It only incites
ridicule from the crowd, um, which is unfortunate. And then
finally the order is given to fire point blank, but low,
so that the metal be injured, not killed. And um,
(20:59):
it's it's not just that the orders are the people
in charge are reluctant to give the orders. The men
are reluctant to carry them out. They don't feel right
shooting um a civilian point blank in their own city,
which makes sense. Definitely, it wasn't something that they wanted
to do. But in the end they do end up
shooting on their orders. And this is from an account
(21:22):
of the terrific and fatal riot at the New York
Astro Place opera house. At last, the awful word was
given to fire. There was a gleam of sulfurous light,
a sharp, quick rattle, and here and there in the crowd,
a man sunk upon the pavement with a deep groan
or a death rattle. So by the third volley or so,
the bystanders had dispersed, and by the fourth the shooting
(21:43):
seems pretty much unnecessary, so they stopped. Yeah. Yeah, most
people consider the fourth round was uncalled for. Um. But
at the end of the whole thing, anywhere from twenty
two to twenty four people were dead, depending on which
account you look at, and most of them were bystanders,
young working men with Irish last names. Approximately a hundred
(22:06):
people are wounded. A lot of those are the soldiers
hit by stones and Um. You know, this rage about
the whole thing continues for a little while. Their bonfires
the next day to protest the masaker Um. Eventually, though,
the tension started to die down and McCready, of course,
I mean, he's not about to be lured into a
(22:27):
second return. Um. He gets back to England as soon
as possible for his farewell tour there. He retired playing
Macbeth in eighteen fifty one in England, and he died
twenty two years later. Um Forest, though, has kind of
a sadder fate. I would say, Yeah, his reputation was
seriously damaged after all of this, and especially later when
(22:51):
he was best known for this lawsuit he was in
with his actress wife. He sued his wife for divorce
on the grounds of adultery and he ended up blue
in the case, but he kept appealing it for the
next eighteen years. It was kind of the scandal that
was in the news, and he was kind of almost
known for that more than his acting, seems well, and
I mean, he was known for these two scandals, two
(23:12):
very apparently very big scandals in the nineteenth century, and
his name is attached to both of them. Maybe a
little too much press um And according to Encyclopedia Britannica
for Us, spent his later years in quote his gloomy
Philadelphia mansion, and he died only a few months before
McCready um. But kind of a final note on this
(23:34):
whole thing, if you're going to look at the broader
history of theatrical riots, there's a really great website called
Shakespeare in American Life. It's part of the folder Shakespeare Library,
and I used it a lot um for the ship
that shipwreck that Saved Jamestown episode two, which was about
the tempest Um. But it's great, you know, the placards,
(23:56):
pictures of the actors, interviews with experts UM and there's
also some commentary from Professor Bruce McConochie, who we mentioned
earlier and UM. Apparently theatrical riots had been really common
before the Astro Place riot, but they didn't continue too
long after it. And part of the reason why is
(24:17):
because the municipal police departments got a lot stronger around
the middle of the century, and so a riot like
this just wasn't allowed to happen. Of course, there's still riots,
but riots in UM, a setting that should be so controlled,
just didn't happen as much. I think that's a good thing. Yeah,
and I'm glad we can go to the theater in
(24:37):
piece these days. Thank you so much for joining us
today for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any
kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you are
l during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete.
It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
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(24:59):
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(25:21):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, Happy Saturday, everybody. A couple of weeks ago, somebody
asked on Twitter whether we would think about doing a
podcast on the Astra Place riot. Well, good news, previous
hosts have already done that for you, so we're going
to share that one today. This originally came out January
five eleven from previous hosts Sarah and Bablina Enjoy Welcome
(00:26):
to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of
I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Sarah Dowdy and I'm delayed Chocolate Boarding. And a while ago,
in fact, right around Halloween, Katie and I talked about
the Macbeth Curse, which is a pretty interesting, spooky subject.
(00:52):
And I mean, there are lots of incidents of the Macbeth,
the supposed McBeth curse, but one that we mentioned was
the Astra Place riot, and it's considered the worst, most
violent theatrical riot in American history. And I thought about
it again recently after reading Dan simmons book drewd and Um.
In it, William Charles McCready is actually a character and
(01:14):
the story of this riot is recounted, and it kind
of piqued my interest. Yeah, it has a lot of
bizarre elements in it. We're going to look at theater
history a little bit, the lives of these two famous
actors who were sort of opposites, and British American forg
relations in the eighteen hundreds, and the early American class
(01:35):
tensions and even some Tammany hall politics. But the best
part of it, we're looking at all of that in
the context of a riot. So, I mean, it's pretty exciting.
And um, I guess just to kick us off, we'll
go through our play bill and introduce the two main
players in this drama. One is a British intellectual and
the other is a rugged American. Right well, the British
(01:58):
intellectual is William Charles McCready, and in eighteen forty nine
May of that year actually he was in the United
States to perform a farewell engagement at Manhattan's finest theater,
which was the Astor Place Opera House. McCready at this
time was considered an intellectual actor, but one with a
lot of intensity, and despite his aristocratic reputation and popularity
(02:21):
with the finer sorts, finer classes, he had gotten into
acting because he didn't have enough money to go to
law school. Yeah, so he had a humble element to
his origins, which is conveniently forgotten later in this podcast.
But at this point McCready was far along in his
theatrical career. He's fifty six years old. I mean, after all,
this is his farewell tour and he's a huge success.
(02:44):
He had played every major role. Uh. He debuted as Romeo,
he played Hamlet, Iago lear Othello, Richard the Third, but
he was most famous for his Macbeth. It was his
signature role, and he's also known for his decide at
ideas about how theater should be done. While managing two
of London's finest theaters, drew Rey Lane and Covent Garden,
(03:07):
McCready was able to establish new expectations for productions. So
he introduced things that were kind of revolutionary at the time.
Actors would rehearse together, which seems obvious nowadays, but I
guess they used to rehearse individually before. Yeah. At the time,
I almost feel like a play was more about going
to see the big soliloquies with your favorite stars, and
so they would learn their lines in private and interpret
(03:30):
them however they wanted, and then come together and you
have to imagine the end product would be sort of
a mishmash, right, So McCready changed that and he made
it more similar to what it is today, people rehearsing together.
He also wanted the costumes to be more historically accurate,
and the sets and props would complement the plays. And
(03:50):
probably most importantly, he revolutionized the way that Shakespeare was performed,
because up until this point they would perform korl did
versions of these what seemed to us um like plays
you could never touch, you know, why would you want
to mess with Shakespeare? But at the time, like King
(04:10):
Lear had a happy ending, a hundred and fifty years
of King Lear with a happy ending, I don't really
see the point. I don't even know how you do that.
But I guess McCready didn't see the point of something
like that either, And so at his houses when they
did Shakespeare, they would do Shakespeare. It might be shortened,
but it wouldn't be a corrupted version. Yeah. And in
the United States there were also some major shakeups going
(04:32):
on in the way Shakespeare was performed at that time
as well, and it was all because of a guy
named Edwin Forrest, who was an actor thirteen years McReady's jr.
And a protege of Edmund Keane, who was regarded generally
as the greatest English actor of his time. And forest
emotionally intense frank performance of Othello in New York City
in eighty six had made his name, and like McCready,
(04:55):
also brought that same intensity to his roles and rugged
good looks helped him as well a little bit. Yeah,
he was very all American, and uh it ultimately made
him a hero of the Shakespeare loving working classes, which
at the time everybody loved Shakespeare. I mean it was
common reading. It was common for working class people to
(05:17):
have Shakespeare partially memorized and to entertain each other by
reciting soliloquies. Um. But just because Forest has impressed a
large part of the American theater going population, some of
the critics were less impressed, and the New York Tribune
critic William Winter rights this really scathing commentary and calls
(05:41):
Forest quote a vast animal bewildered by a grain of genius.
That was harsh cutting. William Winter definitely well. One thing,
there was something that the two men had in common,
the British and the American. They both had an interest
in national play rights. Yeah, I mean, we think of
nineteen country British literature as a time of great novels.
(06:02):
But McCready really wanted people to focus on play, so
he was encouraging writers of his time in his country
to write more plays and get out there and focus
on that. Forest. Meanwhile, set up a contest for the
writing of American plays, and he gets some that he likes,
John Augusta Stone's Metamora and Robert montgomery Birds Gladiator, which
(06:26):
was considered the beginning of native, homegrown American drama. Yeah,
and forest ideal out of all of this was to
have American theater free itself from English plays. I mean,
I'm sure he didn't entirely want to do away with
someone like Shakespeare, but really have its own identity. So
it's easy to see where this is going. It's easy
(06:47):
to see how a professional rivalry between two men of
such great stature in their own countries would develop, and
they did become professional rivals. And the rift apparently stamped
from forest tour of England in the eighteen thirties. He
hissed during one of McCready's London place and yeah, it's
(07:09):
very rude and um. Some accounts said that that was
due to a misunderstanding, but I never found anything that
provided further explanation than that, And I have a hard
time imagining how you would accidentally hiss someone at a play.
And Forest pretty much defended his actions, so all McCready
was left to do was pretty much dismissed the whole thing.
(07:31):
And he also wrote about how annoying and trivial this
whole situation was in his diaries, so he didn't really
strike back per se, but he definitely expressed his displeasure. Yeah,
we can imagine Forest saying I have a right to
him if I want, while McCready is just so annoyed
by the whole the whole story and anything taking attention
(07:52):
away from what's really going on the play. Yeah, but
Forest followers were really devoted to him, and they saw
macready style as um not emotionally intense enough. It was
intellectual and cold. It wasn't their cup of tea. And
so this back and forth feud begins between the followers
(08:13):
of these two men, and it could be anything from
um Forest followers causing troubled you know, causing disturbances that
McCready's plays hissing or cat calling to m macready's followers,
making sure that the finest London literary society was closed. Forest.
So just getting at each other, the followers, just bickering
(08:37):
back and forth for years. There's more to it than
just the acting aspect to it was also about what
the men stood for, and we've mentioned a little bit
of that. It was the obvious national breakdown, McCready being English,
(08:59):
Forest being American. It's the eighteen forties, but there's still
some Anglo American tensions left over from the American Revolution
and the War of eighteen twelve, so that stuff hadn't
entirely disappeared. Yeah, that's hanging over over this whole story.
But it's also about class and McCready is the favorite
actor of the elite and the New York aristocracy that
(09:23):
just love everything about English society. And according to the
theater professor Bruce McConochie, the Forest propaganda actually called McCready
the pet of princes, which is that's pretty cruel, isn't
it um Whereas Forest had this bold style and these
tammany hall connections, and he's of course the favorite of
(09:45):
the working man. So it's a it's a class division. Yeah,
and I mean I think it was put well by
forest biographer Richard A. Moody. He said, no other actor
could churn up the emotions of the American audiences as
four rested with his stormy kind of renderings of Shakespeare's
tragic heroes, or his passionate, patriotic impersonation of any one
(10:07):
of a half dozen freedom loving zeal It's struggling against
tyrannical oppression. So kind of a long quote, but I
think it expresses the way working class people identified with forests.
It express this forest effect on them too. Um So
clearly more is at stake than who's your favorite actor.
And the newspapers label this rivalry the rich against the poor,
(10:29):
so we can see where this is going, definitely fueling it.
So you'd think that promoters wouldn't go looking for trouble
in this heated scenario by staging these two men playing
the same role in the same city on the same night,
But that's exactly what ends up happening. Yeah. So in
early May, there are two placards all over New York City.
(10:52):
One advertisers McCready at the Astro Place Opera House playing Macbeth.
The other advertisers forest at the Broadway Theater in playing
with that. Um. But the managers are hoping. They're not
expecting a riot to come out of this. They're just
hoping that they'll sell all their tickets and pack their
houses and maybe people get a little stirred up. Yeah,
(11:13):
I mean I can see that logic too, But they
start to realize that that's not necessarily the case. When
a manager for Astro Place goes out and gives away
some free tickets on May nine, the day of the show,
and when he returns to the opera house, he finds
out that most of them have already been snatched up.
He suspects that it wasn't all macready fans who wanted
(11:34):
these tickets he was giving away. Yeah, he's smell in
trouble here, and so he asked the chief police for
protection at the show, just in case anything goes down. Um.
So it's the afternoon of the play and the crowd
starts building in front of the theater long before the
doors are set to open, and when they finally do open,
(11:54):
there's just a rush to get in. And I can
imagine going in the doors if you're regular theater goer,
at this time and looking around, it's not the normal
crowd for astor place. The regulars are in their boxes,
but the floor is packed with these tough looking men,
and some are wearing shirt sleeves of you know, horror,
(12:15):
and all of them are wearing their hats indoors and
it seems like, I mean, that would be menacing. Something
is up, something's going to happen. But they're all quiet
and their patient. They're just waiting, but they're also obviously
communicating with each other with these secret signals, perhaps jokes. Yeah,
some jokes get thrown around. Um, so it's um, something's
(12:39):
going to happen, right, So then we have showtime at
about seven thirty, when the play is about to start,
they start stomping. It's something called a tramp warning. Normally
it would die off, but in this case it starts
to get louder. The theater and its chandeliers start to shake. Yeah,
And when the play goes on, there are cheers from
(13:01):
the boxes from these regular theater goers, these regular MacCready fans,
but they're hisses and cat calls and cock crows from
everyone else and kind of imagining different versions of the
arrest development cock crows. Um McCready is drowned out when
he tries to start speaking his lines, and he reacts
(13:23):
pretty impressively to this. I would say, at first, he
just folds his arms and he waits, you know, expecting
that people start to get a little embarrassed and maybe
it'll die out and they can't keep it up forever, Right,
he'll be able to continue his performance. Then he stalks
the stage in front of the footlights, and I mean,
this is a man who sort of got his start
(13:44):
playing villains, melodramatic villains. So I imagine he's got a
great face, a great villainous face, and I imagine he's
throwing it at the crowd as he stalks the footlights.
And then finally he just tries to outshout them, and
he gets part way through the act that way, even
though nobody can hear him. The cries are completely drowning
about Poor lady Macbeth enters and people shout obscenities at her,
(14:09):
so she basically flees the stage. Yeah, it's just getting
worse and worse instead of getting better. People thought maybe
if a lady was on stage, the crowd might have
a little more respect, but that's not quite what happens. Actually,
projectiles start coming at the stage at that point, for
potatoes than rotten eggs. Then a chair at McCready's head.
(14:33):
According to Joel Tyler, he leaves eight seventy three account
someone shouts, go off the stage, you English fool. Who
three cheers for ned Forest Yeah, And then another chair
comes and so at this point McCready is worried he
will be killed and this will be his final tour
and his final performance of Macbeth. So he leaves the
(14:54):
stage and the curtain comes down, and that seems like
should have been the end of this story. Unfortunately it's not. Um.
Theater riots weren't terribly uncommon during this time. People would
riot over things like I thought the play was bad,
or I thought the music was bad. Um. But this
was going pretty far, and McCready certainly thought so, and
(15:18):
he resolved to cancel the engagement go back to England
on the next ship. But his American friends convinced some otherwise. Yeah,
they actually published a petition about it. They UM published this.
It said to W. C. McCready, esquire, Dear Sir the undersigned,
having heard that the outrage at the Astor Place Opera
(15:41):
House on Monday evening is likely to have the effect
of preventing you from continuing your performances and from concluding
your intended farewell engagement on the American stage. Take this
public method of requesting you to reconsider your decision and
of assuring you that the good sense and respect for
order prevailing in this community will sustain you on the
subsequent nights of your performances. So pretty strong recommendation to
(16:04):
stay or please evacuous. Yep, exactly forty seven people sign this,
among them Washington, Irving and Herman Melville. And so McCready agrees.
I mean, if Washington, Rman and Herman Melville ask you
to do something, yeah, definitely. So he decides to perform
(16:31):
may tenth the same play again at Astor Place. Yeah.
But as soon as the placards go up to advertise
this return of the McCready engagement, other placards appear, and
these ones are advertising Forest playing the character of the
gladiator in the Broadway theater on the same night. Now
that we know about gladiators, wondering if he had to
(16:52):
put on a little book a little bit that one. Um,
But there's another placard that goes up to and this
one is a lot more dangerous. It's I mean, this
is in all caps. You can actually see this placard.
Maybe I'll post it on Twitter or Facebook. Um, but
it says working men shall Americans or English rule in
this city. The crew of the British teamer have threatened
(17:15):
all Americans who shall dare to offer their opinions this
night at the English Aristocratic Opera House working men, freemen
stand up to your lawful rights. So pretty serious. They're
insinuating that if you go protest at the Macready performance,
English sailors will attack you. I mean yeah, I mean
(17:38):
strong stuff. Before people assumed maybe it might go off, Okay,
this time there was no question. It's gonna make people
angry reading that there's gonna be trouble. And so in
this case, the police are already plugged in. They're they're
expecting some sort of trouble to go down this time,
and they're actually already inside of the ask Replace Opera
(18:00):
House when the doors open. And so when the doors open,
instead of this crowd rushing in, um, only ticket holders
are allowed. Um. A few ruffians still get in to
make a little trouble. But then the theater is locked,
it's barricaded, the windows are all barricaded, and everything is
ready for the show. Um. Still some of the people
(18:21):
who made it in start their tramporning, and I just
I can't imagine why you would go to this play
imagining being locked and barricaded inside the theater. Yeah, you'd
have to be a big fan. You would have to
be a super fan, a major. I mean, it was
this final tour, I guess. So there's motivation to go,
and the petition and every kill that the theater be
(18:42):
killed at the theater as death by theater. But the
crowd worse than the crowd inside, and the few that
had gotten in. The crowd outside was the part that's
really intimidating. It had gotten enormous, some estimates put it
at about ten thousand to fifteen thousand people, and they
knocked out the street lamps, they threw stones, they tried
to break down the doors. Um, and the police actually
(19:03):
had to start worrying about an actual attack on mc cready. Yeah,
it seemed like there would be an attack from the
few people inside. And once they saw signs that an
attack might be made that they might try to snatch
him off the stage. They started arresting a few of
the rioters who were inside the theater, and supposedly this
further insights the people outside if they get wind of this.
(19:26):
But after a time and McCready continues to act. After
a time he leaves the stage. He sneaks out through
a private door, supposedly disguised as an officer on horseback,
and escapes back to his hotel with friends. Um gets
out of it before it gets any worse, so the
performances over. Basically, then the militia has to arrive. The
(19:52):
rioters rush at the cavalry, driving them into retreat. The
infantry is battered by stones, and eventually it seems like
they're going to have to retreat or fire crowd. And
there we should say to they're all of these paving
stones ready because there's a construction site nearby, so it's
like unlimited projectiles for the rioters, conveniently enough. But yeah. Eventually,
(20:13):
Commanding Officer Major General Charles Sandford gives the order to
charge bayonet, but because the troops and the crowd are
in such close quarters, there's no room to charge, so
some of the crowd actually sees the soldiers muskets, and
there are repeated warnings. Nobody really wants to open fire
on this crowd, um, repeated warnings to disperse or they'll
(20:37):
have to shoot. Finally, the sheriff gives the order to
fire blanks over the crowd's head. Because they realize their
blanks and they're going over their heads. It only incites
ridicule from the crowd, um, which is unfortunate. And then
finally the order is given to fire point blank, but low,
so that the metal be injured, not killed. And um,
(20:59):
it's it's not just that the orders are the people
in charge are reluctant to give the orders. The men
are reluctant to carry them out. They don't feel right
shooting um a civilian point blank in their own city,
which makes sense. Definitely, it wasn't something that they wanted
to do. But in the end they do end up
shooting on their orders. And this is from an account
(21:22):
of the terrific and fatal riot at the New York
Astro Place opera house. At last, the awful word was
given to fire. There was a gleam of sulfurous light,
a sharp, quick rattle, and here and there in the crowd,
a man sunk upon the pavement with a deep groan
or a death rattle. So by the third volley or so,
the bystanders had dispersed, and by the fourth the shooting
(21:43):
seems pretty much unnecessary, so they stopped. Yeah. Yeah, most
people consider the fourth round was uncalled for. Um. But
at the end of the whole thing, anywhere from twenty
two to twenty four people were dead, depending on which
account you look at, and most of them were bystanders,
young working men with Irish last names. Approximately a hundred
(22:06):
people are wounded. A lot of those are the soldiers
hit by stones and Um. You know, this rage about
the whole thing continues for a little while. Their bonfires
the next day to protest the masaker Um. Eventually, though,
the tension started to die down and McCready, of course,
I mean, he's not about to be lured into a
(22:27):
second return. Um. He gets back to England as soon
as possible for his farewell tour there. He retired playing
Macbeth in eighteen fifty one in England, and he died
twenty two years later. Um Forest, though, has kind of
a sadder fate. I would say, Yeah, his reputation was
seriously damaged after all of this, and especially later when
(22:51):
he was best known for this lawsuit he was in
with his actress wife. He sued his wife for divorce
on the grounds of adultery and he ended up blue
in the case, but he kept appealing it for the
next eighteen years. It was kind of the scandal that
was in the news, and he was kind of almost
known for that more than his acting, seems well, and
I mean, he was known for these two scandals, two
(23:12):
very apparently very big scandals in the nineteenth century, and
his name is attached to both of them. Maybe a
little too much press um And according to Encyclopedia Britannica
for Us, spent his later years in quote his gloomy
Philadelphia mansion, and he died only a few months before
McCready um. But kind of a final note on this
(23:34):
whole thing, if you're going to look at the broader
history of theatrical riots, there's a really great website called
Shakespeare in American Life. It's part of the folder Shakespeare Library,
and I used it a lot um for the ship
that shipwreck that Saved Jamestown episode two, which was about
the tempest Um. But it's great, you know, the placards,
(23:56):
pictures of the actors, interviews with experts UM and there's
also some commentary from Professor Bruce McConochie, who we mentioned
earlier and UM. Apparently theatrical riots had been really common
before the Astro Place riot, but they didn't continue too
long after it. And part of the reason why is
(24:17):
because the municipal police departments got a lot stronger around
the middle of the century, and so a riot like
this just wasn't allowed to happen. Of course, there's still riots,
but riots in UM, a setting that should be so controlled,
just didn't happen as much. I think that's a good thing. Yeah,
and I'm glad we can go to the theater in
(24:37):
piece these days. Thank you so much for joining us
today for this Saturday classic. If you have heard any
kind of email address or maybe a Facebook you are
l during the course of the episode, that might be obsolete.
It might be doubly obsolete because we have changed our
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(24:59):
over so social media at missed in History, and you
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