What is sort of amazing about this story, then, is the reality that “acting style” so powerfully captured a zeitgeist. The real binary of the riots might not be aesthetics but a growing divide in the nation.

On one hand, Macready represented continuance of English hold on the culture. A slow partitioning of the highbrow from the lowbrow. See these recordings to compare.

(Video)

(Video)

At the time (political context). You can read more about this here.

So this was the story of an underclass feeling impinged upon by a new elite. And this wasn’t only intangible but in fact had a material corollary in the THEATRE SPACES