HIUS 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Astor Opera House, Class Conflict, Astor Place Riot
HIUS 130 – Lecture 15 – Urban Entertainment in the 1840’s and 1850’s
Shakespeare in Antebellum America
• Free Americans, especially in cities, read a lot of Shakespeare
• In homes, often had Bible and an edition of a Shakespeare play
• Even working men turned out to see the plays
• Traveling Shakespeare troops going to the west
• Highest balcony where black people and prostitutes would sit
o Men would go up and make appointments with prostitutes
• Going to the theater predominately male activity
o Respectable women never went to the theater on their own
• Theater not a form of gentile/polite entertainment
o Audiences saw that they had the right to participate in the shows
• Active engagement was a political right
• Whe the didt like the perforae, the let it e kon
▪ Knew the plays, and knew the interpretations that they wanted to see on the
stage
• Common people were as familiar with Shakespeare as we are with TV
• Children learned to memorize Shakespeare in schools
o Education was focused on memorization
• No sense of Shakespearean theater being a higher entertainment, it was common entertainment
• Shakespeare part of theater double features
o Ex: play and acrobatics, play and comedy act
• Tried to make twists on the stories
o Ex: trying to turn a tragedy into a comedy
• New York City had most vibrant theater culture
• Chages 8s ad 8s
o Try to appeal more to women
• Kick out prostitutes
• Woe ad hildre eloe
• Matinees
o In context of growing political tension between Whigs and Democrats, growing conflict over
slavery, growing class conflict, growing conflict between temperance types and drinkers was
making elites less comfortable with the rowdy theater experience
New Istitutios: Baru’s Museu ad the Astor Place Opera House
• Remaking theater to attract middle class women
o No prostitutes
o Matinees
Baru’s Museu
• Barnum appealed across class lines, but also made it appealing to middle class women and
children
o Pioneered matinee
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