Raising the curtain on a bloody riot and stark mayhem.

RIOTS; ARTISTS; ACTORS; FORREST, Edwin, 1806-1872; MACREADY, Charles; ASTOR Place (New York, N.Y.)

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This article discusses the Astor Place riot, an event which occurred on the night of May 10, 1849 in Manhattan, New York, involving American idol Edwin Forrest and Charles Macready, Great Britain's most celebrated stage actor. The riot came about over the momentous question of who was the better performer. One clue to the tragedy that followed can be seen in the list of occupations of the 146 men who were eventually arrested: a roll call of butchers and machinists, printers and railway porters, sail makers and marble cutters, plumbers and shoemakers. These Bowery B'hoys, as they were known, were regular theater patrons, but not ordinarily at the Opera House in Astor Place. To some critics Macready was a man to whom Nature has refused everything, voice, carriage and face. Forrest by contrast was an obsessed physical culturist, a veritable Hercules. Macready, an Old World sophisticate, had a genius for upstaging other actors. More important to what transpired at Astor Place, both men were outrageously nationalistic about the theater. During a Philadelphia performance of William Tell, Macready once upbraided a property man for supplying him with arrows of inferior U.S. quality. For Forrest, he believed in the American frontier and resented the affected influence of English actors on the U.S. stage. The feud reached new heights of passion when Macready appeared as Hamlet in Edinburgh on March 2, 1846.