The Good Old Days…

when the theater was taken seriously. Douglas Lanier writes, “On may 7 [1849] Edwin Forrest and William Macready, long-time Shakespearian rivals, mounted competing productions of Macbeth in New York City, Forrest at the Broadway Theater, Macready at the Astor Place Opera House. Forrest, an American actor of populist style and rhetoric, was immediately acclaimed in the role, while constant heckling prevented the English Macready, a performer of cerebral and patrician bearing, from even completing his performance. Persuaded by literary luminaries and other community leaders that mob rule could not be allowed to stand, Macready performed the play three days later to a packed house while militia held back an angry crowd outside. In the heat of the melee, the police fired point-blank into the crowd, killing twenty-one people.”