Astor Place Riot - Genesis

Genesis

William Charles Macready, painting by John Jackson

The roots of the riot were multifold, but had three main strands:

(1) A dispute between Macready, who had the reputation as the greatest British actor of his generation, and Forrest, the first real American theatrical star. Their friendship became a virulent theatrical rivalry, in part because of the poisonous Anglo-American relations of the 1840s. The question of who was the greater actor became a notorious bone of contention in the British and, particularly, the American media, which filled columns with discussions of their respective merits.

(2) A growing sense of cultural alienation from Britain among mainly working-class Americans, along with Irish immigrants; though nativist Americans were hostile to Irish immigrants, both found a common cause against the British.

(3) A class struggle between those groups, who largely supported Forrest, and the largely Anglophile upper classes, who supported Macready. The two actors became figureheads for Britain and America, and their rivalry came to encapsulate two opposing views about the future of American culture.

It was ironic that both were famous as Shakespearean actors: in an America that had yet to establish its own theatrical traditions, the way to prove its cultural prowess was to do Shakespeare as well as the British, and even to claim that Shakespeare, had he been alive at the time, would have been, at heart at least, an American.