Des fanatiques de Shakespeare ont donné leur vie pour «Hamlet»

[Tout le monde l'a oublié aujourd'hui,]  dans notre inculte patrie, un jour, Hamlet déclencha une émeute. [...] le célèbre comédien américain, Edwin Forrest, avait fait une tournée en Angleterre, au cours de laquelle il avait vu l'illustre William Macready, noble tragédien britannique, interpréter le prince [de] Danemark. Forrest avait exprimé son dégoût sans mesure. Aux yeux de cet acteur qu'une jeunesse pauvre et démocratique avait transformé en un homme musclé et éclatant de santé, le Hamlet de Macready se dandinait, se trémoussait sur scène de manière absurde, décadente, dégradante pour le noble prince.
C'est ainsi qu'avait débuté entre ces deux fameux comédiens une querelle publique qui ne cessa de s'envenimer. En Angleterre, Forrest avait dû quitter les planches, sous les huées de la foule, et, quand Macready s'était produit aux États-Unis, on lui avait rendu la pareille. Le public l'avait bombardé d'œufs douteux, de vieux souliers, de pièces de cuivre et même de chaises. L'affrontement avait atteint son comble quand le 7 mai 1849, quinze mille manifestants s'étaient massés devant le vieil Astor Palace Opera House de Manhattan, afin d'interrompre la représentation donnée par Macready. Le maire de New York, inexpérimenté car il n'avait pris ses fonctions que huit jours plus tôt, avait fait appeler la milice avec ordre d'ouvrir le feu sur la foule. Vingt à trente hommes étaient morts cette nuit-là.

Jed Rubenfeld, L'interprétation des meurtres, 2006, Panama, 2007

The Astor Place Riot - May 10, 1849

On the evening of May 10, 1849, a crowd some 15,000 strong gathered outside the Astor Place Opera House to protest the appearance of the English Shakespearean actor, William Charles Macready. A symbol of British aristocracy, Macready (1793-1873) had not endeared himself to Americans, most of whom he considered boorish and uncultured. In expressing its distaste for Macready, the crowd championed Edwin Forrest (1806-1872), an American-born Shakespearean actor who shared their fierce working-class determination not to be dominated by elite outsiders.
Members of the crowd, primarily young males, began pelting the theater with paving stones, the debris from a nearby construction site. The stones rained down on the building and on the unarmed police called in to protect the theater and the English actor. Assault followed assault. The crowd would not be repulsed. Policemen were injured. Finally, the militia were summoned to quell the disturbance. When the echo of gunfire quieted, 23 people lay dead or dying, and over 100 were wounded, some seriously.
What was it about two Shakespearean actors vying to win a popularity contest that created such public turmoil? How did tragedy spill from the stage onto the streets? What class and larger national passions found vent in this explosive act of civil disorder?
Edwin Forrest, the America's leading Shakespearean actor, had toured England in 1846. Forrest blamed Macready for the poor reviews he received from London critics, who favored openly Macready. Forrest took the opportunity to extract revenge by hissing Macready during a performance of Hamlet in Edinburgh. This behavior outraged the English press, although Forrest justified himself by asserting that such hissing was not only the audience’s right, but their responsibility - as a kind of "on-the-spot" critique of an actor’s style.
When William Macready planned a tour of America in the fall of 1848, it was with an eye toward settling in this country. He met with opposition from the American press and rumors that Forrest's supporters would disrupt his performances. His run in New York City, however, went without incident that fall. At a benefit performance on his closing night at the Astor Place Opera House, Macready thanked the audience for the "kind and flattering reception" given to him.
The fastidious and rigorous William Charles Macready (1793-1873) was the most celebrated British actor of his day. Trained as a lawyer, he sought to raise the professional status of acting and carefully thought out every action he would take on stage. His rehearsal process was extensive, for uppermost in Macready's mind was the cultivation of theatrical art.
Macready's habits, however, did not make him popular with fellow actors. British actress Fanny Kemble, a contemporary, recalled that: He was unpopular in the profession, his temper was irritable, and his want of consideration for the persons working with him strange in a man of so many fine qualities. His artistic vanity and selfishness were unworthy of a gentleman, and rendered him an object of dislike and dread to those who were compelled to encounter them.
Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) was the first American-born actor to gain the stature of an international celebrity. Without exceptional education or family, he distinguished himself through persistent work. For every performance, he trained with a regiment of diet and exercise comparable to a wrestler preparing for a fight. Described by a critic as "a vast animal bewildered by a grain of genius," Forrest was not known as a subtle performer, but his resonant voice, expressive features, and powerful physique made him a favorite with American audiences.
By the mid-nineteenth century, he was earning the remarkable sum of $2,000 a week. Fiercely patriotic, he believed that no country offered more opportunity to the ambitious than his native land. Forrest epitomized the democratic ideals of America. Adoring fans, most of whom were working-class, idolized him. Forrest specialized in playing strong men who battled against oppression. Here, he is depicted in the role of Spartacus, the rebellious slave who fought valiantly against the Romans, but was captured in 71 B.C. The role in The Gladiator was one of Forrest's more popular parts.
Walt Whitman commented on Forrest's gladiatorial acting, suggesting that his style, while deserving of praise, could lapse into excess and a too-strident desire to be heard and applauded by those in the pit. Whitman denounced those actors, who in endeavoring to copy Forrest, "take every occasion, in season and out of season, to try the extremist strength of their lungs."
During Macready's tour of America, Forrest tried to provoke the English actor, performing the same roles at competing theaters and sending inflammatory letters to the press. When Macready returned to New York City for a final run, Forrest planned a competing production. On May 7, 1849, all three leading theaters in the city presented Macbeth -- Forrest appeared at the Broadway Theatre, Macready at the Astor Place Opera House, while Thomas Hamblin, manager of the Bowery Theatre, also mounted a production in which he starred.
The Astor Place Opera House, erected in 1847 by a group of philanthropists, was built at the juncture of Broadway and the Bowery. Then replete with gracious homes and imposing hotels, Broadway was the province of the wealthy. The Bowery, however, was lined with saloons and boarding houses. The patrician dress code at the Astor Place Opera -- white kid gloves and silk vest -- offended the "Bowery B'hoys," who felt that such elitist standards violated the egalitarian principles of the American democracy. The Opera House, with its exclusive policies, served as an emblem of the cultural schism that continued to pit the leisure class against the laboring class even in the Jacksonian era.
On May 7, 1849, the evening when the three leading theaters in the city presented Macbeth, the Astor Place Opera House was packed with Forrest supporters, who interrupted Macready's performance with hoots and catcalls. Macready recalled in his diary, "Copper cents were thrown, some struck me, four or five eggs, a great many apples, nearly-if not quite-a peck of potatoes, lemons, pieces of wood, a bottle of asafoetida which splashed my own dress, smelling, of course, most horribly."
In the third act, four chairs were hurled at the stage from a corner of the upper balcony. One landed in the orchestra pit and another at Macready's feet, where it shattered. Pointing to the fragments strewn about him, Macready bowed to the audience and made his exit, announcing that he would leave the city.
The May 7th disturbance at the Astor Place Opera House outraged many in the community. A petition decrying the behavior of the Forrest supporters, signed by 48 prominent New Yorkers, including Washington Irving and Herman Melville, was sent to Macready and published in local newspapers. Promised support and protection, Macready agreed to perform again, and bills were posted around the city announcing his appearance in Macbeth on the night of May 10, 1849. But some of the rowdy "Bowery B'hoys" also posted notices urging a protest during Macready's appearance at the "English ARISTOCRATIC Opera House."
Despite rumors of unrest, William Niblo and James H. Hackett, who held the lease on the Astor Place Opera House, were determined to proceed with the performance. To ensure a full house, Niblo and Hackett sold and gave away more tickets than the theater could hold. Captain Isaiah Rynders, a partisan Tammany Hall politician, purchased a number of tickets, which he then handed out to Forrest supporters. Despite the efforts to exclude rowdies from the audience, hecklers inside the house disrupted the performance a second time. Mayor Caleb S. Woodhull had requested that they close the theater that night, but the two producers insisted that the civil authorities protect them. Therefore police and government officials were on hand to maintain order.
Caleb S. Woodhull (1792-1866) had been mayor of New York City for less than a week, when he was faced with this crisis. He ordered the police force to guard the Opera House. To forestall trouble, a force of roughly 250 policemen, under the command of police chief George W. Matsell was stationed in and around the Astor Place Opera House. The doors of the theater were closed and barricaded, and windows were covered over with inch-and-a-half boards. Meanwhile, the National Guard was put on alert.
A crowd estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000 people assembled in the streets outside the Astor Place Opera House. Only a small portion of the congregants, perhaps 200-500 people, most of them teenage boys, was actively involved in the violence. They began hurling paving stones and brickbats (broken pieces of brick) at the policemen stationed outside the Opera House. As the police took refuge inside, the mob began hurling stones at the windows, destroying the flimsy barricades, and stones rained onto the audience inside.
The mob then began an assault on the main doors of the theater, taking up large paving stones from the street and hurling them against the barricaded doors. A call for military help produced two divisions of the 7th Regiment, which formed a line in front of the theater. The crowd continued to assault the troops.
Troops from the 7th Regiment were lined up against the south side of the Opera House, facing Astor Place. The troops fired three volleys into the crowd. The first, fired over the heads of the mob, led many in the crowd to believe that the troops were firing blanks. The second was fired low, at their legs. When the mob continued to attack, a third volley was fired directly into the mob. When the smoke cleared, 23 people lay dead or dying.
After Macready's performance on the night of the Astor Place Riot, he left the theater in disguise and hid at the home of a friend. In the early hours of the morning, he escaped the city in an enclosed carriage, traveling to New Rochelle, where he embarked by train to Boston. New Yorkers were understandably shocked by the bloodshed and wondered how a tragedy of this proportion could have occurred. Newspapers observed that twice as many Americans had lost their lives in the Astor Place Riot as at the Battle of New Orleans; five times more than died in the Boston Massacre. It was the first time that American troops had ever fired on Americans. New York City, and the nation, were torn apart.
Who was responsible for this tragedy? Many blamed government officials for ordering the militia to fire. Others held Edwin Forrest responsible for inciting the public against Macready with his inflammatory letters to the press. Some felt the press was responsible for dignifying a petty quarrel between two actors with partisan editorials. Still others blamed the petitioners who insisted that Macready should perform, in spite of the obvious antagonisms he had provoked.
In the days following the Astor Place Riot, rallies were held in Washington Square Park to protest the killings. As an official inquest was conducted, National Guard troops kept vigil at the Astor Place Opera House to prevent further outbreaks of violence.
William Charles Macready lost his chance to retire in America, far removed from the English aristocracy that would not accept him within its ranks.
Forrest remained popular with the Bowery B'hoys, but respectable society scorned him.
Remembered as the site of a massacre, the Astor Place Opera house never recovered. It limped along for several more seasons under new managers who tried everything from opera to minstrel shows to magic, but without much success. In 1854, the building was converted into a library and lecture hall. ■ Barbara Brewster Lewis