Is the Macbeth curse true?

Question

we were discussing about shakespearean plays this afternoon at school and our teacher mentioned about Macbeth having a curse.. she said, there are some who died after the play, she also mentioned that one of the students in our school felt ill for some 2 weeks after the play. but i doubt that it has anything to do with any curse... im not into superstitous thing that much.. but, maybe someone could shed some light on it for me...

Answer 1

Yeah, i dunno... i mean its silly (as are most superstitions) but just the same, i won't say "Macbeth" in a theatre. I will refer to it as "The Scottish Play" if i need to.

Even at the Tony's this year... the play Macbeth was up for a couple of awards and Mary Louise Parker, for instance was presenting and she did not say "Macbeth" (she said "The Scottish Play"...

Answer 2

It does have a lot of superstition attached to it - thespians refer to it as "The Scottish Play" because they believe it is bad luck to speak out the real title on stage.

Apparently the whole superstition and bad luck thing centres around the belief that Shakespeare used authentic witches spells in the play, angering the real witches and causing them to cast a curse on the play.

Answer 3

i'm not sure if it's true or not, i've certainly heard all those rumors of deaths and bad luck.  I myself played one of the witches and nothing befell me but we had a nightmare trying to get the production off the ground.  One actor broke a knee and we had to postpone and lots more smaller incidents happened that one could call 'bad luck', a lost watch, split pants, spills of every kind of liquid and food backstage.  After all the trouble the Director and myself (stage manager) regretted it.