If you ever find yourself walking in Astor Place in downtown Manhattan you might notice a plaque, really more of a laminated sign, tucked in the window of one the new skyscrapers between The Bowery and Lafayette Street. The sign, which is maybe only 18 by 24 inches, reads ASTOR PLACE RIOT with a 19th-century lithograph of a vast crowd menacing a neoclassical building.
In the foreground, one can see individuals in various poses suggesting alarm and outrage, or else lying on the ground, wounded. In the distance, you can see the faint outline of troops, with illuminated clouds of smoke dancing above their heads. This modest poster, so easy to miss in the hubbub of the square, is the only memorial on the spot of an event that endlessly fascinates me: The Astor Place Opera House Riot of May 10, 1849.
There's something both grimly funny and profound to me about the riot; it seems to express the madness of American history. A mob of thousands attempted to storm a theater over a performance of Macbeth, the National Guard had to be called up, 31 people were killed and more than 100 wounded all over the personal jealousies of two vain and insecure actors, an Englishman with aristocratic airs named William Macready, and an American, Edward "Ned" Forrest, who seemed to his audiences to embody a new democratic energy.
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The dispute between Macready and Forrest is such a labyrinth of prickliness, petty slights, and paranoia that it's hopeless to try to recount in detail, but I'll try to briefly summarize it. Forrest had previously hissed at a performance of Macready's in Edinburgh, which he later proudly admitted in a letter to a newspaper. Forrest believed that, in revenge, Macready had deliberately set the English press against him and damaged his career there. In any case, neither of them comes off well in the incessant letters lambasting each other that were published in the newspapers in both countries.
By the time he arrived in America for his performance of Macbeth, a considerable section of the public had turned against Macready, especially those in the working class, who despised anything fancy and British, although they still loved Shakespeare. That same public was also ill-disposed to the venue he was to play. The Astor Place Opera House had been built specifically to bring European high culture to New York and it required attendees to have clean shaves and kid gloves. Sitting just off the top of The Bowery, where a Starbucks now resides, it looked superciliously down at the more demotic theaters that dotted that row.
Forrest also happened to be acquainted with a downtown ward boss named Isaiah Rynders, a former gambler who made his living running saloons and brothels and wrangling Irish votes for the Democrats, and one E.Z.C. Judson. A former sailor, Judson had seduced a man's teenage wife in Tennessee, killed the man in the ensuing duel, and then was set upon by an outraged mob and lynched, only to be cut down by a passerby. He made his way to New York, where he took up the profession that seems to attract such low sorts sooner or later: journalism. He ran a scurrilous rag that played on nativist themes and wrote plays that pandered to the tastes of "Bowery B'hoys," as the dandified proletarian ruffians who roamed downtown streets spoiling for fights were called.
