The Scottish Play
The Scottish Play and the The Bard's Play are euphemisms for William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The first is a reference to the play's Scottish setting, the second a reference to Shakespeare's popular nickname. According to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish curse, speaking the name Macbeth outside a theatre will cause disaster. A variation of the superstition forbids direct quotation of the play (except during rehearsals) while inside a theater.
Because of this superstition, the lead character is most often referred to as the Scottish King or Scottish Lord. Sometimes Mackers is used to avoid saying the name, mostly in North America.
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Origins [edit]
Those who believe in the curse claim that real spells are cast in the three witches scene. Some believers claim that including the character Hecate, frequently cut from productions of the play due to questions about her part's authorship, intensifies the curse.
Actors who do not believe the superstition will sometimes abstain out of politeness to those that do.
Productions of Macbeth are said to have been plagued with accidents, many ending in death.[who?] According to legend, this dates back to the premiere of the play: an actor died because a real dagger was mistakenly used instead of the prop.[citation needed] The play does include more fight scenes and other such opportunities for accidents than does the average play, and the atmosphere in the backstage area of old-fashioned theatres was a prime setting for disasters, especially when dealing with potentially dangerous equipment. This would explain the accidents without invoking magic.
The popularity of the superstition might also be related to its mild hazing aspect. Veteran actors might relate some tale of woe that they witnessed personally due to someone invoking the curse, lending credibility and immediacy to the tale.
One hypothesis for the origin of this superstition is that Macbeth, being a popular play, was commonly put on by theatres in financial trouble, or that the high production costs of Macbeth put theatres in financial trouble, and hence an association was made between a production of Macbeth and theatres going out of business.[1]
According to the superstition, Shakespeare got a few of the lines from an actual coven of witches and when they saw the play they were greatly offended and cursed the play.[citation needed] Another tradition tells that the original propmaster could not find a suitable pot for a cauldron and stole one from a coven, who then cursed the play in revenge for the theft.[citation needed] It is believed that breaking the taboo calls the ghosts of the three witches to the show and it is they who cause all the mishaps. The last, and probably most spectacular view of the curse is that Shakespeare used the curse in the play to actually curse the play himself, guaranteeing that no one other than himself would be able to direct the play.[citation needed] It is also reported that when Shakespeare learned that James I, whose Scottish heritage he was trying to celebrate with the play, had not particularly enjoyed it, he became bitterly disappointed and would only refer to the play as "that Scottish play" for the rest of his life.[citation needed]
Cleansing rituals [edit]
When the name of the play is spoken in a theatre, tradition requires the person who spoke it to leave, perform traditional cleansing rituals, and be invited back in. The rituals are supposed to ward off the evil that uttering the play's name is feared to bring on.
The rituals include turning three times, spitting over one's left shoulder, swearing, or reciting a line from another of Shakespeare's plays.[2] Popular lines for this purpose include, "Angels and ministers of grace defend us" (Hamlet 1.IV), "If we shadows have offended" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.ii), and "Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you" (The Merchant of Venice, 3.IV).[2] A more elaborate cleansing ritual involves leaving the theatre, spinning around and brushing oneself off, and saying "Macbeth" three times before entering again. Some production groups insist that the offender may not reenter the theater until he is invited to do so, therefore making it easy to punish frequent offenders by leaving them outside.
The cleansing rituals have been parodied numerous times in popular culture, including in Blackadder, Slings and Arrows, and The Simpsons.[3] For example in the Blackadder episode Sense and Senility, a parody ritual performed by two actors involves slapping each other's hands pat-a-cake fashion with a quickly-spoken ritual ("Hot potato, off his drawers, pluck to make amends"), followed by a pinching of the nose. In Slings and Arrows, a guest director mocks the superstition by saying the word "Macbeth" onstage, spins around, and falls off on her third spin, resulting in an injury that takes her out of commission for the rest of the season.[4]
Notes [edit]
- ^ Harrison, Martin (1998). The Language of Theatre. Routeledge. p. 239. ISBN 0-87830-087-2.
- ^ a b Garber, Marjorie B. (1997). Shakespeare's Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality. Methuen. p. 88. ISBN 0-416-07432-5 Check
|isbn=value (help). - ^ Laurie Maguire and Emma Smith (2012). 30 Great Myths about Shakespeare. John Wiley & Sons. p. 151. ISBN 1118324870.
- ^ Richard Burt (2007). Shakespeares after Shakespeare: an encyclopedia of the Bard in mass media and popular culture, Volume 2. Greenwood Press. p. 698. ISBN 0313331189.
External links [edit]
- Review: Curse of the Play Review of a newspaper article on the superstitions about Macbeth.
- Supernatural on Stage: Ghosts and Superstitions of the Theater
- Macbeth: The Male Medusa
