When New York City Rioted Over Hamlet Being Too British

In the deadly Astor Place Riot, how to perform Shakespeare served as a proxy for class warfare

by Betsy Golden Kellem (Smithsonian Magazine)

When Major-General Charles Sandford recalled the scene at the Astor Place Theatre on May 10, 1849, it was with a sentiment one would not normally associate with a night at the theater. “During a period of thirty-five years of military service,” wrote the general, “I have never seen a mob so violent as the one on that evening. I never before had occasion to give the order to fire.”

Sandford, a general in the New York militia, was describing one of the most violent public outbursts in New York history, an explosion of class tensions brought about by a bitter feud between two popular Shakespearean actors.

Young, talented Edwin Forrest was all bravado and macho on stage, and American audiences loved him—he embodied self-satisfied proof that America had finally achieved cultural independence from its British forebears.

William Charles Macready, an established, classically trained actor known to portray Hamlet with fey handkerchief-waving, was rigid and English. And one of the few things working-class Americans could agree on, despite their diversity, was that they all disliked the English – Irish immigrants brought resentment across the Atlantic, American nativists were skeptical of anything foreign, and most lower classes considered “English” to be a shorthand dig against the tone-deaf wealthy and their frequently British sympathies.

Shakespeare himself escaped anti-English sentiment; to the contrary, Americans loved the Bard’s stories, but wanted no part of foreign stage direction, and preferred Forrest’s new muscular aesthetic to the traditional British formality epitomized by Macready. Actors may seem an odd proxy for political and economic anxieties, but traveling performers were often the most accessible representative of their countries, and an easy coathook for cultural stereotypes.

The actors once enjoyed a cordial and professional rivalry, but it became progressively, publicly nasty after Forrest hissed his competitor from the box seats at a performance in Edinburgh, Scotland – an offense bordering on scandal at the time. Calling Macready’s Hamlet “a desecration of the scene,” Forrest refused customary contrition, horrifying the starched upper class (and delighting Americans with his brash defiance). And since actors in the antebellum period received the sort of loyalty and enthusiasm we now associate with professional sports teams, fans happily amplified the conflict.

Macready’s supporters ensured Forrest’s performances abroad received tepid coverage from the British press, sabotaging his obsession with global fame, and Forrest made it hard for his rival to play in the states without a competitive booking or a rowdy house. At a Macready performance in Cincinnati, patrons in the gallery went so far as to throw half a dead sheep onstage.

As Forrest and Macready sniped in the press, the sensational back-and-forth came to symbolize class warfare in America: the wealthy, Anglophile establishment (labeled the “Upper Ten,” a one-percenter nickname referring to the city’s 10,000 wealthiest residents), against the broad masses; native-born Americans against a rising tide of immigrants; and low-wage workers against nearly anyone better off.

Why the uproar? A recent wave of immigration into the U.S. had sent wages down, causing tension between native-born Americans and the new arrivals (many of them Irish Catholic), who were often derided as unskilled oafs and blamed for the moral and physical squalor of rough urban neighborhoods. Working-class New Yorkers, who felt politically disenfranchised by the wealthy on one side and immigrants on the other, powered nativist groups to victory in the 1844 city elections.

Not to mention that the War of 1812 was close enough in American memory to drive the nail in the coffin as far as mainstream affection for England was concerned; the war was popularly viewed as a turning point after which the nation finally freed itself from British cultural control and embraced exceptionalism.

The theater at Astor Place sat in the wealthy Broadway neighborhood, within shouting distance of the working-class Bowery. And if the Bowery Theater, where Forrest had made his debut, was where the neighborhood street toughs known as “b'hoys” went to holler and throw peanuts as they enthusiastically watched Shakespeare (sometimes shouting lines along with the cast, or clambering onstage to try on Richard III’s crown themselves), the Astor Place Theatre was emphatically the opposite: all velvet seats and white-gloved society posturing, with a dress code that all but required one to arrive by expensive carriage.

And so, when Macready arrived in New York to play the Astor Place Theatre in the spring of 1849, it was considered, in the words of an account written later that year, “the signal for an outbreak of long-smothered indignation.”

At a performance on Monday, May 7, the audience pelted Macready with a cascade of rotten eggs, pennies and shouting. Frustrated, the actor decided to cut his losses and leave town – but was persuaded to stay by his backers, who assured him of their support and a safe stage. Macready agreed to remain and to perform Macbeth that Thursday evening.

The b’hoys, feeling taunted by a Brit in their backyard, made assurances of their own. Overnight, handbills signed by the “American Committee” papered New York, asking: “WORKING MEN, SHALL AMERICANS OR ENGLISH RULE IN THIS CITY?"

On the morning of Macready’s performance, the New York Herald conceded that tensions ran high, but predicted optimistically: “The conduct of the rioters, on Monday night, has roused the feelings of order and propriety in the community, to such an extent as will render all attempts at riot utterly ineffectual and impracticable."

They were spectacularly incorrect. 

At curtain, some 200 police officers posted themselves inside the theater at Astor Place, with 75 more outside, where the crowd soon swelled to more than 10,000 people. Inside, tempers rose when it became clear that the house had been oversold, giving ushers the opportunity to weed out the riffraff and still fill the hall (tickets sold by Macready’s agents bore a special identifying mark). Forrest supporters who had managed to get into the theater found themselves cherry-picked for arrest during the first act of the play, with the crowd loudly cheering as they were dragged off one by one. The prisoners promptly set their holding cell on fire.

One man was heard to yell: “I paid for a ticket and they wouldn’t let me in, because I hadn’t kid gloves and a white vest, damn ‘em!”

Outside, the crowd grabbed loose cobblestones from a construction site nearby and assaulted the theater with volleys of rocks, breaking windows, bursting water pipes and darkening streetlights. 

Police and New York state militia tried in vain to push the crowds away from the theater. General William Hall told the mayor that it was time to either open fire or retreat, for he would not have his men stoned to death while they carried guns. The soldiers were ordered to fire over the crowd’s heads. When this did nothing to discourage the incessant hail of stones, they lowered their sights and shot again, firing into the mob. In the end, only the threat of cannon fire managed to disperse the crowds, and when the chaos cleared, 18 lay dead and dozens more injured, many of them bystanders. More than 100 rioters were arrested. The Herald described the dead in follow-up coverage: some of them Irish, some “born in this State;” men and women; carpenters, clerks, printers, laborers. “All were unanimous,” the paper declared, “that they lived in trying times and a very dangerous neighborhood.”

When the dust settled on the Astor Place Riot, perhaps the most unsettling takeaway was that the damage and bloodshed had offered no lasting catharsis for the aggrieved, and only deepened the gulf between have and have-not. It was the most significant loss of civilian life in New York since the Revolution, and would remain the city’s most violent incident until the 1863 draft riots.

In the coming days, agitators swore vengeance, protestors wanted city authorities indicted for daring to fire on American civilians, and armed military cautiously patrolled all the while. A threatened second riot was quelled. A few days after the riot, a jury relieved police and militia of responsibility for the shootings, circumstances having “justified the authorities in giving the order to fire.” Five more people died of their wounds within days, bringing the total to 23 dead. The riot’s ten primary instigators, including the journalist and author Ned Buntline (famous for his later affiliation with Buffalo Bill Cody), were convicted, fined and jailed in September 1849.

Forrest continued in outsized ego, drawing out a dramatic public divorce from his English wife and performing until his death in 1872 – returning to the stage in part so that the American public, which had so enthusiastically supported him in his early career, might do so again by paying his alimony. William Macready retired from the stage in 1851, writing in his diary with evident relief that “I shall never have to do this again.”

BIOS

Charles Macready

William Charles Macready, (born March 3, 1793, London, Eng.—died April 27, 1873, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire), English actor, manager, and diarist, a leading figure in the development of acting and production techniques of the 19th century.

Macready was entered at Rugby to prepare for the bar, but financial difficulties and his sense of personal responsibility caused him to abandon his education and take up—temporarily, he thought—the theatre, a profession for which he always felt an intense dislike. In 1810 he made his debut in his father’s company, as Romeo, at Birmingham and rapidly acquired fame in other roles in provincial theatres. In 1816 he appeared at Covent Garden, London, and played a series of melodramatic villains. He performed with such earnestness and truth that he became firmly established, and by 1820 he was recognized as one of the finest contemporary English actors, second only to Edmund Kean. Macready achieved his greatest fame playing such Shakespearean roles as Hamlet, Iago, Lear, Othello, and Richard II.

Macready served as the manager of Covent Garden from 1837 to 1839 and as manager of Drury Lane from 1841 to 1843. Though his tenures as manager of these theatres were financially unsuccessful, they did allow him to extend his theory of acting to all the elements of production. He was the first to impose upon the 19th-century theatre the principle of unity: that the actors and all others connected with a performance were to be guided by the central concepts of the playwright. In an era when leading actors routinely memorized their lines in private and performed their parts any way they wished, Macready insisted upon thorough rehearsals in which all the roles were well-played and artistically coherent with each other. Macready instituted the use of accurate costumes in historical dramas and made special efforts to obtain sets and scenery that harmonized with the plays. And finally, he rejected the corrupted versions of Shakespeare’s plays that were universally used at that time and instead reverted to the original texts. All of these innovations were realized in Macready’s notable revivals of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Macbeth, King Lear, Henry V, and The Tempest. The historical research behind these productions influenced English stagecraft, and the principle of theatrical unity anticipated practice in the 20th century.

Macready worked tirelessly to persuade leading literary figures of the day to turn to the writing of plays. He is closely associated with Edward Bulwer-Lytton and James Sheridan Knowles, among the most consistently successful of serious British dramatists in this period. After 1825 he moved freely in the highest literary and artistic circles of London, and the pages of his voluminous diary detail that life. Macready made several tours outside England. In 1828 he performed in Paris, and he visited the United States in 1826, 1843, and 1848–49. During Macready’s last visit to America in 1849 a longstanding feud started by his rival, the American actor Edwin Forrest, erupted into tragedy. During a performance of Macbeth by Macready at the Astor Place Opera House in New York City, Forrest’s partisans tried to storm the theatre and thus started a riot in which more than 20 persons were killed and from which Macready narrowly escaped with his life. He returned to England for his farewell performances and retired from the stage in his favourite role, Macbeth, in 1851.

Macready was an intellectual actor and was at his best in such philosophical roles as Hamlet and Richelieu. He was also capable of great emotional intensity, however. Although he was a lesser actor than David Garrick and perhaps Kean at his best, Macready was more important than either in his influence on the acting style and production techniques that made possible the art of the modern theatre.

Edwin Forrest

Edwin Forrest (born March 9, 1806, Philadelphia—died Dec. 12, 1872, Philadelphia) American actor who was the centre of two major scandals of the mid-19th century.

In 1820 he made his stage debut as Young Norval in John Home’s tragedy Douglas at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia. In 1825 he played in support of Edmund Kean, and his maturity as an actor dated from this experience. During 1826 he played Othello in New York City to great critical acclaim. On offering cash prizes for plays by American authors, Forrest received several suited to his talents, including John Augustus Stone’s Metamora and Robert Montgomery Bird’s Gladiator; this has been considered the beginning of native American drama. Among his outstanding roles were Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, and Mark Antony.

Forrest was initially successful in his first engagement in England in 1836, when he introduced the American acting style, but a misunderstanding led him to publicly hiss a performance by William Macready, arousing great indignation in England. His disagreement with the English actor culminated in the so-called Astor Place riot in New York City in May 1849. While Macready was playing at the Astor Place Opera House, a mob of Forrest supporters stormed the theatre. The militia was called out, the rioters fought the militia, and the militia fired on the mob. Twenty-two persons were killed and 36 wounded. Forrest’s reputation never quite recovered from this catastrophe, and only two years later he caused another national sensation when he instituted a divorce suit against his wife, the actress Catherine Sinclair, for adultery. Although he lost the verdict, he appealed the decision for 18 years. After 1852 Forrest acted only sporadically, spending much time alone in his gloomy Philadelphia mansion. He left most of his money for the establishment of a home for aged actors.

Opinions on Forrest as an actor varied. Although many critics considered him first-rate, he was described by the New York Tribune dramatic critic William Winter as “a vast animal, bewildered by a grain of genius.”

Dion Boucicault

Dion Boucicault, (born Dec. 26, 1820/22, Dublin, Ire.—died Sept. 18, 1890, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Irish-American playwright and actor, a major influence on the form and content of American drama.

Educated in England, Boucicault began acting in 1837 and in 1840 submitted his first play to Mme Vestris at Covent Garden; it was rejected. His second play, London Assurance (1841), which foreshadowed the modern social drama, was a huge success and was frequently revived into the 20th century. Other notable early plays were Old Heads and Young Hearts (1844) and The Corsican Brothers (1852).

n 1853 Boucicault and his second wife, Agnes Robertson, arrived in New York City, where his plays and adaptations were long popular. He led a movement of playwrights that produced in 1856 the first copyright law for drama in the United States. His play The Poor of New York, based on the panics of 1837 and 1857, had a long run at Wallack’s Theatre in 1857 and was presented elsewhere as, for example, The Poor of Liverpool. The Octoroon; or, Life in Louisiana (1859) caused a sensation with its implied attack on slavery.

Boucicault and his actress wife joined Laura Keene’s theatre in 1860 and began a series of his popular Irish plays—The Colleen Bawn (1860), Arrah-na-Pogue (1864), The O’Dowd (1873), and The Shaughraun (1874). Returning to London in 1862, he provided Joseph Jefferson with a successful adaptation of Rip Van Winkle (1865). In 1872 Boucicault returned to the United States, where he remained, except for a trip to Australia that resulted in his third marriage (for which he renounced the legitimacy of his second marriage). Among his associates in the 1870s was the young David Belasco. At the time of his death he was a poorly paid teacher of acting in New York City.

About 150 plays are credited to Boucicault, who, as both writer and actor, raised the stage Irishman from caricature to character. To the American drama he brought a careful construction and a keen observation and recording of detail. His concern with social themes prefigured the future development of drama in both Europe and America.

Of note, Boucicault wrote LONDON ASSURANCE, a production of which was shown through NT Live in one of the first seasons. He also wrote the original production of AN OCTOROON, which Brandon Jacobs-Jennings reimagined in 2017

Washington Irving

Washington Irving (born April 3, 1783, New York, New York, U.S.—died November 28, 1859, Tarrytown, New York) writer called the “first American man of letters.” He is best known for the short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

The favourite and last of 11 children of an austere Presbyterian father and a genial Anglican mother, young, frail Irving grew up in an atmosphere of indulgence. He escaped a college education, which his father required of his older sons, but read intermittently at the law, notably in the office of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, with whose pretty daughter Matilda he early fell in love. He wrote a series of whimsically satirical essays over the signature of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent., published in Peter Irving’s newspaper, the Morning Chronicle, in 1802–03. He made several trips up the Hudson, another into Canada for his health, and took an extended tour of Europe in 1804–06.

On his return he passed the bar examination late in 1806 and soon set up as a lawyer. But during 1807–08 his chief occupation was to collaborate with his brother William and James K. Paulding in the writing of a series of 20 periodical essays entitled Salmagundi. Concerned primarily with passing phases of contemporary society, the essays retain significance as an index to the social milieu.

His A History of New York…by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809) was a comic history of the Dutch regime in New York, prefaced by a mock-pedantic account of the world from creation onward. Its writing was interrupted in April 1809 by the sudden death of Matilda Hoffman, as grief incapacitated him. In 1811 he moved to Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist for the Irving brothers’ hardware-importing firm, but his life seemed aimless for some years. He prepared an American edition of Thomas Campbell’s poems, edited the Analectic Magazine, and acquired a staff colonelcy during the War of 1812. In 1815 he went to Liverpool to look after the interests of his brothers’ firm. In London he met Sir Walter Scott, who encouraged him to renewed effort. The result was The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (1819–20), a collection of stories and essays that mix satire and whimsicality with fact and fiction. Most of the book’s 30-odd pieces concern Irving’s impressions of England, but six chapters deal with American subjects. Of these, the tales “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” have been called the first American short stories. They are both Americanized versions of German folktales. The main character of “Rip Van Winkle” is a henpecked husband who sleeps for 20 years and awakes as an old man to find his wife dead, his daughter happily married, and America now an independent country. The tremendous success of The Sketch Book in both England and the United States assured Irving that he could live by his pen. In 1822 he produced Bracebridge Hall, a sequel to The Sketch Book. He traveled in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, the British Isles, and later in his own country.

Early in 1826 he accepted the invitation of Alexander H. Everett to attach himself to the American legation in Spain, where he wrote his Columbus (1828), followed by The Companions of Columbus (1831). Meanwhile, Irving had become absorbed in the legends of the Moorish past and wrote A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and The Alhambra (1832), a Spanish counterpart of The Sketch Book.

After a 17-year absence Irving returned to New York in 1832, where he was warmly received. He made a journey west and produced in rapid succession A Tour of the Prairies (1835), Astoria (1836), and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837). Except for four years (1842–46) as minister to Spain, Irving spent the remainder of his life at his home, “Sunnyside,” in Tarrytown, on the Hudson River, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits.

Locations

Google Earth project with map of locations referenced in the play.

Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags

Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags is a play originally starring Edwin Forrest. The play was written in 1829 by John Augustus Stone. It was first performed December 15, 1829, at the Park Theater in New York City.

On November 28, 1828 a contest was posted in the New York Critic by American actor, Edwin Forrest, offering a prize of 500 dollars for an original play which met such criteria as, “a tragedy, in five acts, of which the hero, or principal character, shall be an aboriginal of this country.” Forrest, looking to produce a play suiting his strengths, created the contest as an opportunity to boost his acting career. With his play, Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags, playwright and actor John Augustus Stone stood out among his competitors and took home the prize. The play, which opened on December 15, 1829, was an instant hit. Due to a combination of the highly publicized contest, Forrest’s growing celebrity, and the timely subject matter of the play itself, the performances resonated with audiences across the growing country, earning theaters record profits, of which Stone received very little. Gaining almost no profit from Metamora and earning little success with his subsequent plays, Stone threw himself into the Schuylkill River on June 1, 1834. His death was heavily publicized in the press, and soon after his death, Forrest erected a memorial in honor of Stone, which reads: “In memory of the Author of ‘Metamora’ By his Friend, Forrest."

In the wake of Stone’s death, Metamora flourished even more in American theatres, with Forrest in the spotlight. In fact, no other actor “in the character of the hero qualified Mr. Forrest’s claim to the highest excellence. It was created for, and entirely fitted all his peculiarities." Though he played the lead in Metamora for forty of its sixty-years run, Forrest garnered a reputation as a respected actor and collectively had one of the best and most prolific careers of any actor of the time. Some historians argue, however, that he never fully stepped away from his famous Metamora, and any leading roles he undertook “were extensions of his stage Indian, Metamora transplanted to another time and place, but still the proud, doomed individual."

Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags follows the story of its eponymous Indian hero and his downfall at the hand of English settlers during Puritan infiltration in seventeenth century New England. At the opening of the play, Metamora is cordial, if hesitant, towards the Puritans, even befriending Walter and his love Oceana, who is betrothed to Fitzarnold. The remainder of the play is devoted to the converging stories of Oceana and Walter, among other Puritans, and Metamora, his wife Nehmeokee, their son, and the remainder of the Wampanoag forces. The ending is bittersweet as Oceana is at last able to marry Walter, but Metamora lies slain next to his wife and child, cursing the English with his final breaths.

Though Metamora is referred to as an Indian tragedy, its themes of love, war, dramatic deaths and suicides, and declaratory speeches make the play better described as a romantic melodrama. The depiction of Metamora as a kind and “noble savage,” turned violent by force especially resonated with the mid-19th century audience. However, the play’s cultural popularity did nothing to convince critics of its literary value. Critical response was mostly negative, and as one critic very harshly put it, “Mr. Stone did what he could to atone for the injury which he had inflicted upon the world by the production of this play. He drowned himself. We will accept the presumptive apology.” Though widely unpopular with contemporary critics of the day, most acknowledged the success of Forrest as the play’s lead. “This drama was indebted for its success almost entirely to the actor, as its literary merits were feeble” states biographer James Rees.

In the years following such pivotal events in history as the American Revolution and the War of 1812, a strong feeling of nationalism infiltrated early America. This sense of national pride influenced not only everyday life, but also became evident in the arts, including early American theatre. After a time when mostly British theatre was performed in America, a desire to create drama specific to America emerged. America needed to establish itself in the midst of the well-developed drama and literature of other nations, as well as set a standard for what is uniquely American. However, this need for nationalism soon manifested itself in drama through American character types: the Negro, the Yankee, and in the case of Metamora, the Indian. As historian Walter Meserve points out, “American literature became identifiable only after writers had recognized the potential of American scenery, custom, characters, and ideas... in a sense, they were bound together by a similar desire for freedom: the Yankee from the English, the Indian from the Yankees, and the Negro from bondage.” Depictions of oppressed, underdog characters such as the Yankee, Negro, and Indian overcoming captivity, or dying gloriously, represented the themes of freedom and liberty that characterized the newly independent America.

In the nineteenth century, about seventy-five Indian-related plays were written. The first American play with an Indian hero was a closet drama from 1776, marking the beginning of what would become one of the biggest trends of the century. The character Metamora was inspired by New England Chief, Metacomet or King Philip, who was famous for attacking the English in 1675-1676. By the mid to late nineteenth century, the popularity of Indian drama quickly declined, mostly due to many satires written in jest of the excessive bravado and grandiose common to such plays.

Opening only one year before the passage of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, Metamora’s depiction of a scorned and violent savage against English settler victims raises questions about the motives of both Forrest and Stone. In an essay analyzing the issue, Scott Martin remarks, “Recent interpretations insist that Stone’s play and Forrest’s personation of the title character, coming as they did when the fate of the southeastern tribes emerged as an urgent issue in congressional debate and the public mind, represented more than a mere coincidence in the realm of popular culture." Mark Mallett argues that Forrest’s partiality to the Democratic Party, and to Jackson, was the driving force behind Metamora. “Forrest’s play,” he asserts, “brought the Democrat’s message back into the theatre... effectively distracting public attention from the horrors of the government’s Indian Removal campaign.” However, others contend that Metamora was simply a vehicle for Forrest’s career and a story that suited the romantic ideals of its audience. “The overemphasis of political and racial ideology as the preeminent analytical context may cloud rather than clarify the relationship between Metamora and Jacksonian Indian policy. A close consideration of Metamora’s place in antebellum culture, and the contexts in which it can be interpreted, should give pause to scholars who are quick to detect efforts to engineer political advantage in very corner of art and popular culture."