Quote of the Day (Juan Ramírez, on Shakespeare and the Theater’s Hardiest Superstition)

“Perhaps the industry’s best-known bylaw is that, unless acting in Shakespeare’s early 17th-century play, one should never say the word ‘Macbeth’ inside a theater — otherwise you risk ruining the current production. The origins of this are predictably murky. The play traffics in things that might very well incur a hex — witches, hauntings, grisly murders — but one possible source could be the simple fact that, in an era when most theater companies operated in repertory (performing a rotating selection of popular works), ‘the Scottish play,’ as the piece can be safely referred to, was a guaranteed moneymaker. If your season was failing, it might be time to stage ‘Macbeth.’”— New York-based Venezuelan-American writer and critic Juan Ramírez, “Don’t Say ‘Macbeth,” in T (The New York Times Style Magazine), Nov. 17, 2024

I noticed the above article, with its explanation for the bad luck associated with saying the word “Macbeth,” on the same weekend that one of my local PBS stations was re-running a charming indie production from a few years ago, called—yes, The Scottish Play.

But even before writer-director Keith Boynton had alluded to this curse in comic cinematic fashion, someone else had beaten him to it in the early oughts: the creators of the fun Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, set in a fictional Shakespearean festival like the real-world Stratford Festival.

One episode from its second season, “Rarer Monsters,” sends up the whole jinx with tongue in cheek, much like the rest of this series.

Some readers of this post—those who have a real sense of theatrical history—are likely to protest: “But, Mike, the curse is real!” 

They’ll point to a legendary British production of the play starring Sir John Gielgud, when three actors died during the show’s run and a costume designer killed himself right after the premiere.

And what about poor Charlton Heston, who, in a 1953 production, had severe burns to his legs—the result of his tights being soaked in kerosene?

“Fie!” as The Bard would say (and as I do now). Did that stop Gielgud from directing a 1952 production of the play with the Royal Shakespeare Company? And did the curse stop Heston from coming back to the play for the fifth time in a 1975 staging with Vanessa Redgrave?

Well, I will give the skeptics this: Those witches at the start of the show, if costumed and lit correctly (maybe like the image accompanying this post), are definitely enough to give one…the Willies.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on ‘The Instruments of Darkness’)

“Oftentimes to win us to our harm
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence.”—Banquo to Macbeth, upon hearing the prophesies of the three witches, in English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Macbeth, Act I, Scene 3 (1606-07).
 
The image accompanying this post, Macbeth, Banquo and the witches on the heath, was created by England-based Swiss painter Henry Fuseli (1741–1825).

TV Quote of the Day (‘Slings and Arrows,’ on the Curse of Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish Play’)

Ghost of Oliver Welles [played by Stephen Ouimette]: “The Scotsman is evil. Both he and Banquo encounter the witches, both their futures are foretold, but only The Scotsman goes on a killing spree.”

Geoffrey Tennant [played by Paul Gross]: “‘The Scotsman’? Oh, do you mean- Mac-beeeth?’

Oliver: “Geoffrey, please!”

Geoffrey: “What?”

Oliver: “Don’t say his name aloud!”

Geoffrey: “Who? Mac-beeeeth?”

Oliver: “You’re just asking for trouble.”

Geoffrey: “Well, we are rehearsing a play called Mac-beeeth. It’s gonna be a little awkward if I can’t say the title character’s name.”

Oliver: “This isn't actually rehearsal. This is a meeting after rehearsal.”

Geoffrey: “Oh, I'm so sorry, Oliver, I forgot—you believe in ‘the curse.’”

Oliver: “And you don't?”

Geoffrey: “No. The only thing cursed about this play is that it is extraordinarily difficult to stage effectively.”

Oliver: “So you think you're above this kind of superstitious prattle?”

Geoffrey: “As a matter of fact I do, yes.”

Oliver: “You're talking to a ghost! Wake up and smell the coffin!”— Slings and Arrows, Season 2, Episode 3, “Rarer Monsters,” original air date July 11, 2005, teleplay by Susan Coyne, Bob Martin and Mark McKinney, directed by Peter Wellington

This weekend, I couldn’t help thinking of this quote from Slings and Arrows, the great TV dramedy of the early oughts about a troupe of Canadian actors in a setting with a more-than-passing resemblance to the Stratford Festival.

It seems like quite the year for Macbeth, between the Denzel Washington-Frances McDormand film that came out this past winter and the stage adaptation starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga that premiered on Broadway the other night.

Besides receiving a decidedly mixed critical reception, the Bard’s tragedy is keeping up with its tradition as jinxed, suffering COVID-related nightmares (with not only Craig, its surest draw, forcing cancellation of some preview performances after he tested positive, but enough other absences that director Sam Gold was forced to play a role himself).

No matter. “The Scottish play” will endure despite the morass of challenges awaiting anyone who dares to stage it, because it says so much about the potential for evil that lies within all of us—but, most consequentially, within those close to the center of power.