Macbeth and the "Curse"

While I was finishing up one of my interviews I thought of one more question that had had me wondering for a while. Without thinking about where I was I blurted out the question, “Why is every one so crazy about the word Macbeth?” Thru-out my short experience with the theatre I was told that Macbeth is the last thing you want to say in the playhouse. In fact my friends had gone so far as to make me run and knock on the nearest piece of real wood in the back stage. I thought that asking my interviewee who had been in theatre for a while would be a good idea to see what he thought about the crazy superstition. I couldn't tell if he agreed with it, but he seemed adamant. When I asked him his eyes lit up like he was up to something.  
  “Ahh.” He said “ Macbeth. Your not supposed to say that word in the theatre house unless your performing it.” When I asked why he shrugged. “Its just become a tradition. It is a suspicion that people have held onto.”
Right then my brother walked into the theatres auditorium that we were talking in. “Did I just hear someone say the "M" word?!.” He said his eyes wide in fained terror.
My friend and I looked at each other and laughed, automatically getting ready to blame it on the other person. “ Oh yeah," I said, "I was asking him about it.”
He jumped in and tried to help me out, “No, I was telling her about it.” We ended the conversation about Macbeth there, but I walked away with an unsatisfying answer . When I got home I decided to look it up and find out what people had to say about it. It turns out there’s a lot of things that went wrong in the first performance of Macbeth, but not only then, all of the performances after it. There were so many instances reported about people either getting hurt, committing suicide, falling of theatre balconies, stabbing each other with actual swords, getting into car crashes and many more that people liked to blame the curse. Some like to believe the play was cursed by three witches in Shakespeare's time who were not happy with the theatrical display of the three witches in the show. Less superstitious people try to explain that the play itself has a lot of sword play, fighting and murders all done at night (or dimmed lights), and thus the likelihood of getting hurt in some way  was greater then your regular show.
 In 1611 when Macbeth was supposedly first performed, the actor going to play Lady Macbeth got sick and died before he could go on stage, causing Shakespeare himself to go and play the part. Shakespeare was hoping to impress King James the 1 and so he included witches (something that the King found great interest in), a family member of the King and also made it a short play, knowing that the King did not like long ones. Unfortunately it was not a hit, and it would be another 50 years before it was done again. The ways that people go around the “curse” is by calling the play something different, The Scottish Play is the most used and popular. Other names include, The Scottish King, Mackers and the Scottish Lord. If and when you say it you are told to run and do one of the many things to counter act the curse. Just a taste of them are, knocking on real wood, running out side the theatre spinning three times and spitting, cursing or quoting some lines from Hamlet.
So now I’m satisfied because I found out what its all about. I don’t think there really is a curse on the play and I’m not going to run around outside after I’ve said it, but I am going to keep in mind that it is a dangerous play because of its stage combat. I think I’ll stay away from that one unless the director is going to use foam swords.
-Sara Furmato

Read more at:
http://home.flash.net/~manniac/macb.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scottish_Play
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/column.php?id=160421