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One of the bloodiest incidents in New York’s history, the so-called Astor Place Riot of May 10, 1849, was ignited by a long-simmering grudge match between the two leading Shakespearean actors of the age. Despite its unlikely origins, though, there was nothing remotely quaint about this pivotal moment in history–the unprecedented shooting by American soldiers of dozens of their fellow citizens, leading directly to the arming of American police forces.
The Shakespeare Riots recounts the story of this momentous night, its two larger-than-life protagonists, and the myriad political and cultural currents that fueled the violence. In an engrossing narrative that moves at a breakneck pace from the American frontier to the Mississippi River, to the posh theaters of London, to the hangouts of the most notorious street gangs of the day, Nigel Cliff weaves a spellbinding saga of soaring passions, huge egos, and venal corruption.
Cliff charts the course of this tragedy from its beginnings as a somewhat comical contretemps between Englishman William Charles Macready, the haughty lion of the London stage, and Edwin Forrest, the first great American star and a popular hero to millions. Equally celebrated, and equally self-centered, the two were once friends, then adversaries. Exploiting this rivalry, “nativist” agitators organized mobs of bullyboys to flex their muscle by striking a blow against the foppish Macready and the Old World’s cultural hegemony that he represented.
The moment Macready took the stage in New York, his adversaries sprang into action, first by throwing insults, then rotten eggs, then chairs. When he dared show his face again, an estimated twenty thousand packed the streets around the theater. As cobblestones from outside rained down on the audience, National Guard troops were called in to quell the riot. Finding themselves outmatched, the Guardsmen discharged their weapons at the crowd, with horrific results. When the smoke cleared, as many as thirty people lay dead, with scores more wounded.
The Shakespeare Riots is social and cultural history of the highest order. In this wondrous saga Nigel Cliff immerses readers in the bustle of mid-nineteenth-century New York, re-creating the celebrity demimonde of the day and capturing all the high drama of a violent night that robbed a nation of its innocence.
- Sales Rank: #72734 in Books
- Published on: 2007-04-17
- Released on: 2007-04-17
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.57" h x 1.12" w x 6.60" l, 1.30 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 312 pages
From Publishers Weekly
A dispute over Shakespeare resulted in a deadly riot on May 10, 1849, at New York City's Astor Place Theatre, where armed militiamen clashed with theatergoers, gangsters and bystanders. In the melee, some 50 soldiers and 50 civilians were wounded and more than 20 civilians killed. Cliff, a former theater and film critic for the London Times, sees the riot as symbolic of a young America trying to find its cultural voice and resentful of what some saw as British cultural imperialism. The fatal dispute was between two Shakespearean actors, the intellectual Englishman William Charles Macready and American working-class hero Edwin Forrest and began when Forrest hissed at Macready's performance of Hamlet in Edinburgh. This book ranges widely, from the 1809 riots at a Macbeth performance at London's Covent Garden to Shakespeare's popularity on the American frontier, where his plays helped pioneers wrestle with fundamental questions about human nature, and America's old and new money classes as immigrants flooded into the country. Nicely illustrated with contemporary photos and cartoons, Cliff's informative, engrossing if somewhat scattered debut recreates a time when the Bard inflamed passions in lower classes and gentry alike, and when America's theaters "were a crossroads of a whole society." (Apr. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
During the evening of May 10, 1849, a massive riot broke out in Astor Place in New York City, involving at least 20,000rioters, causing scores of fatalities, and leading to the use of the military in quelling the violence. But this was no typical street quarrel between ethnic gangs, and it certainly wasn't a case of have-nots driven to rage by their poverty. Rather, the rival gangs were fighting on behalf of two unlikely antagonists, both of them prominent Shakespearean actors. William Macready was an aristocratic, foppish actor acclaimed by elites in New York and London; Edwin Forrest was the darling of working-class theater fans. Cliff, the former film and theater critic for The Times of London, tells their story and the story of their followers with considerable verve and a consistent sense of irony. He supplies a wonderful portrait of mid-nineteenth-century New York as an emerging metropolis, and the tale set there is an enjoyable but unsettling mixture of farce and tragedy. Both general readers and those with a special interest in the period will find much to enjoy here. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Nigel Cliff was educated at Oxford University, where he was awarded a double First in English and the Beddington Prize for English literature. He is a former theater and film critic for the London Times and a contributor to The Economist. This is his first book.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Drama in the New World
By Christian Schlect
While I think the author spent too much time fleshing out the varied and obscure disputes between the two actors featured in his book, it is still quite good. It is strongest when describing the significant social changes occurring as America evolved in the mid-19th century. The early theatre provides a nice platform for the talented Mr. Cliff to describe in lively terms such things as the movement West, the striking influx of immigrants to New York City, the emerging divisions between the upper and lower urban classes, and the rise of an American way of looking at Shakespeare.
With this successful effort at understanding early America, I suggest this friend of our country from England, Nigel Cliff, now turn his attention and skills to writing a book on the influence of William Shakespeare on our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Acting Rivalries on an International Stage
By Rob Hardy
Not long ago we had movies of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ starring Mel Gibson in the first and Kenneth Branaugh in the second. Imagine that Hollywood blundered and released both at the same time for premieres in New York City to compete with each other. Now imagine that this made fans of Gibson and fans of Branaugh so furious that there was a clash between thousands of them, throwing stones and lighting fires, and that when the police and militia were called in, more than twenty people died. If your imagination can't pull all that off, you can stop trying. It all really happened, only it happened in 1849, in New York City outside the Astor Place Opera House, where respective fans of an American Shakespearean actor and an English Shakespearean actor caused what is known as the Astor Place Riot. If it still seems improbable, the precedents for the battle are comprehensively set up in _The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America_ (Random House) by Nigel Cliff. This brilliant and entertaining book looks back at early nineteenth century acting traditions, the importance of Shakespeare to Americans, the culture wars between England and Britain, and the class conflicts within New York City, so that the riot itself occupies only the last quarter of the book. The riot may still seem an implausible historical episode, but Cliff has so thoroughly plumbed its many roots that in the book's final chapters, the riot seems like a sad inevitability.
For us, Shakespeare represents a lofty realm of academic reverence, but it is surprising that frontiersmen wanted not melodrama or farce, but the Bard. Shakespeare's plays were fully a quarter of all the plays put on in America, and on the frontier there was no more popular playwright. And so when America produced its first theatrical star, it was Shakespeare that was his platform. Edwin Forrest was "a poster child for Jacksonian America," and his working-class or frontier audiences responded to his down-home brawny presence. The leading actor in England at the time was William Charles Macready, who was a quieter performer than Forrest, and audiences in both America and England got to sample the performances of both men. The two of them were able, initially, to enjoy each other's work, and were friends, with a friendly rivalry. There were tensions at the time that brought America and England as close to war as they had been since their battles of 1812, so that part of being pro-America at the time was being anti-British. It might have been inevitable, but the friendly rivalry between him and Forrest became unfriendly, and then bitter.
The clash between countries manifested in New York City, where the new Astor Place Opera House had been built as a temple to propriety to be frequented by the upper classes, but which was located close enough to annoy their inferiors. "The theatres had always been the great democratic gathering places," Cliff writes, "the only arenas where the people's voice was louder than the elite's, where the poor could sit in judgment on the wealthy folk below." That the Astor wanted to police itself of the Irish and any other gangs by instituting a strict dress code was bad enough, but that it booked Macready to play his brand of British-style _Macbeth_ made the crowds angry. On the night of the riot, Macready was able to get through the play with only some catcalls, but outside, a mob of 15,000 people surrounded the building, bombarding it with paving stones, and eventually enduring the rifle fire from the militia. Macready was able to elude the mob; it was his last American performance. Cliff points out that this was "the first time that two classes of Americans had failed to resolve their conflicting rights without resorting to muskets and brickbats," and it was the worst of riots until those protesting the draft in 1863. The riot also lead to police being issued their first lethal weapons, heavy clubs to be used, of course, in self defense. It was one reason that Americans changed the way they enjoyed Shakespeare; the riot promoted segregation of classes and depopularized the Bard, with scholastic veneration taking place of popular enthusiasm. An astonishing story full of period detail, _The Shakespeare Riots_ is a grand history of a forgotten episode that was surprisingly influential in American theater, class structure, and nationalism.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
The original culture wars - a wonderful read
By James S
In his impressive debut, Nigel Cliff takes an unlikely but fascinating episode in New York history - a few days when the city was under martial law, troops were marching through the streets and thirty people were shot dead, all over whether an American or English actor was better at doing Shakespeare - and uses it to paint a captivating picture of nineteenth century America and beyond.
Moving between decadent London, the Mississppi frontier and New York gang hideouts, Cliff brings to life the hero worship of the first American star Edwin Forrest. All muscles and fire, Forrest promised to rid America of England's cultural hold on its old colony - amazingly, decades after independence the entire entertainment business was still a British affair. He soon became enmeshed in a first comic but increasingly bitter feud with his arch rival, Englishman William Macready. At first friends, the two chased each other around America and England, and such was the celebrity of star actors that they came to stand in for their countries. It all ended with America's first class war, between an elite that supported the refined Macready and nativists who hated the old world and everything it stood for. It seems extraordinary that Shakespeare was at the heart of all this - but clearly he was: a figure so omnipresent figure in the young republic that towns, mountains, mines, even drugs were named after him and America was determined to adopt him, thinking that his heart would have lain here rather than with degenerate England.
What made this book especially enjoyable to read was the wonderfully visual writing, which takes you straight into the middle of events. Despite the research behind it, it reads almost like a novel, and the author has an engaginly conversational style and dry humor. Recommended for anyone interested in Shakespeare, social and cultural history, or just a good tale skillfully told.
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