Shakespeare's Ear

by Tim Rayborn

  These beliefs may have ancient Greek origins in the myth of Argus Panoptes, a giant who was covered with a hundred eyes. He served Hera as a guardian of the nymph Io, whom Zeus desired. Zeus schemed and had Hermes kill Argus. In Argus’s memory, Hera had his eyes preserved by transferring them to the feathers of the peacock’s tail. But exactly how that relates to theater is uncertain.

  Another theory suggests that the bird and its feathers were prized by the Mongols, who terrorized Eastern Europe in the thirteenth century and would likely have overrun the West if not for being called back to Asia in 1242 to elect the successor to their leader, Ögedei, who died in 1241. Some suggest that the fear of the bird may recall an older fear of Mongol attacks. This one is quite a stretch, though, since peacocks were valued as garden curiosities and also eaten at fancy banquets in Europe during the Middle Ages, complete with their colorful plumage stuffed back into the roasted bird carcass for effect.

  More recently, when the television network NBC adopted a peacock logo and used the catchphrase “proud as a peacock,” there were murmurings about tempting fate. Though a TV network is quite different from a theatrical house, some worried that the bad luck could carry over, since what is television if not a modern-day version of the theater? The logo doesn’t seem to have caused much harm, however, or the network probably would have already discarded it. Of course, NBC did proceed to bring out shows like Misfits of Science, We’ve Got it Made, and Manimal, so maybe there’s something to the curse after all.

  Unlucky colors

  It’s no surprise that in the complex history of drama, some colors are considered unlucky. One color, blue, has a rather practical reason for being condemned. According to belief, blue should not be worn onstage unless it is also accompanied by or trimmed with silver.

  In earlier times, certain types of blue dyes were difficult to manufacture and therefore expensive. If a company could afford to use them it meant that they were well-off financially. However, failing companies would sometimes go into debt to obtain such colors anyway, in order to present themselves as being successful. This, of course, could quickly lead to bankruptcy and ruin, and so blue-colored costumes came to be viewed with some suspicion. In order to counter claims that a company was hiding its failings and to calm fears, such companies might place themselves even further at risk by investing in real silver to adorn the blue, to show that they had genuine money or backing by a wealthy patron. From this, a superstition arose that blue must always be accompanied by silver, to prove that the company and the show would not fail.

  Yellow is another unlucky color for the stage. This probably dates back to the Middle Ages, when yellow was a favored color worn by the devil in medieval mystery plays. So obviously, if an actor is wearing yellow, it could bring bad luck, make an actor forget lines, or at the very least invite some unwanted diabolical attention. Green is viewed with some suspicion as well, especially in France. It is thought that in medieval plays, the character of Judas often wore a green costume, thus tainting the color for all time. Also, legend says that Molière died while wearing the color, further marring its reputation.

  Deadly flowers

  We normally give flowers as tokens of affection and appreciation. Think about that for a minute—we hand someone we love or admire a bundle of plant sexual organs and expect them to be flattered by it. Anyway, the giving of flowers after successful performances is a long-standing tradition, whether as bouquets or even just individual flowers tossed by audience members onto a stage.

  In the weird world of the theater, there was a tradition of giving flowers to the director or the lead on closing night from a rather special source. Since it was the end of the run, it was considered good luck to offer a bundle of flowers stolen from a grave. Apparently, this gift symbolized the closing (“death”) of the show, which could then be laid to rest after a successful run. Obviously, one would never want to do this before closing night, because it could affect the show badly and perhaps make it close early.

  Okay, so pilfering from the dead is completely unethical, disrespectful, and illegal. This strange practice probably came about simply because acting companies didn’t have a lot of spare money, and beautiful flower arrangements could be expensive. Therefore, the local graveyard would be an ideal place to obtain such bouquets at the right price. The idea of a couple of actors sneaking into a cemetery late at night to retrieve various bundles of flowers is either a setup for a hilarious comedy skit or a horror film. You would think that with so many other theatrical superstitions about not wanting to tempt fate, upset ghosts, or disturb unseen evil forces, the last thing a company would want to do is indulge in a bit of grave robbing just to save a few coins. The bigger question is: What if someone accidentally says “Macbeth” in a cemetery? On that note …

  The curse of “the Scottish Play”

  This is probably the most famous of all theatrical superstitions, one that raises many questions and inspires even more ridicule. Essentially, no one should ever say the word “Macbeth” in a theater, or quote lines from it if one is anywhere but onstage. To do so will invite all kinds of disaster and probably some horrified reactions from those within earshot. If anyone is foolish (or foolhardy) enough to tempt fate, they will often be forced to perform a ritual to counter the evils they have unleashed. First the others will say, “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” In a scene reminiscent of a Monty Python skit, said offender must then leave the building, spin themselves around three time counterclockwise (wonderfully known as “widdershins” in older English), curse (or actually say “Macbeth”), and then knock or request to be let back into the theater; the British comedy Blackadder has a particularly funny version of this ritual, with the title character causing havoc for two very superstitious Regency actors. Other ways of defusing the supernatural tension include reciting Puck’s speech from the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (“If we shadows have offended …”), or perhaps quoting from The Merchant of Venice (“Fair thoughts and happy hours attend on you”). Apparently, the spirits will then be appeased.

  Clearly, this fear is something that many actors and directors still take very seriously. So what is the origin for what many would think is just nonsense? There are actually several theories, and a number of incidents that do seem to indicate that something strange can happen when the dreaded play is performed or mentioned. There is an unverified account that a young actor, Hal Berridge, who portrayed Lady Macbeth during the play’s first performance in 1606, died, forcing Shakespeare to take on the role. This makes a great story but has never been proven. Berridge’s ghost was said to have haunted the production and probably other productions after that.

  The dark themes of the play left it open to accusations of sorcery behind the scenes and curses working against it. At the time, there were fears that the reciting of occult-like rituals and spells during a theater performance risked summoning actual demons (remember Marlowe and Faust?), which would most definitely ruin the production. Some even thought that Shakespeare had received the curses and dialogue from actual practitioners of black magic, and that they may have cursed the play after being displeased with how he had portrayed them. The general dark mood and tone of the story, coming as it did after the infamous foiled Gunpowder Plot (when Catholics planned to blow up Parliament and with it King James), most definitely cast a long shadow over the whole production. James himself was highly superstitious and believed that witches were plotting against him and his reign, using black magic and diabolical schemes.

  Practical explanations for the belief that there is a curse associated with the play include the fact that Macbeth features a lot of stage combat and often has dark sets, so injuries are naturally going to be more likely; tripping or accidentally hitting someone too hard would be all too easy to do. Further, the play is fairly short and has long been a crowd-pleaser despite (or probably because of) its dark themes. So companies often added it at short notice, hoping to use it to draw in bigger crowds, especially if t
heir other productions were disappointing or failing. As such, the play could end up being under-rehearsed, which would lead to all sorts of disasters, on the stage and off. If such a company was on the verge of going out of business anyway, it may well have seemed like a production of Macbeth had finished it off.

  All of this may well be true, but there have been some strange occurrences over the centuries that do make one wonder if something evil is going on behind the scenes. The play is known for being connected with unrest and riots in the audience. In the seventeenth century, a performance of Macbeth was staged at the indoor Blackfriars Theater in London. At the time, those who were wealthy enough could actually pay to sit on the stage and show off their finery while the actors carried on nearby; whose stupid idea was that? During the play, one such nobleman did the equivalent of talking on his cell phone—he got up and walked in front of an actor delivering his lines to greet a friend on the other side of the stage. The actor protested to him and the noble, not used to being addressed in such a way by a lowly player, slapped him. This caused chaos and soon a riot broke out. We can only hope that someone gave said noble a good smacking.

  Perhaps the most notorious example of a riot was at a performance of the play at Astor Place in 1849 in New York. The chaos originated over a dispute between two actors of the time, the American Edwin Forrest and the English William Charles Macready, over who was the actor best able to perform the leading roles in Shakespeare’s plays. This dispute went well beyond the two of them—the rivalry found its way into newspaper stories and popular opinion. At the time, there was a strong anti-British sentiment among some Americans (the War of 1812 was still recent enough), and British actors or other entertainers who toured the US frequently met with hostility, derision, and heckling. These two actors came to represent that Anglo-American rivalry, especially in regards to class distinction. Forrest was strongly supported by the working class, who were emphatically pro-American, while Macready had the support of the upper classes, and those who still looked favourably on British high society.

  On May 7, 1849, anti-Macready forces had bought up a number of tickets and deliberately disrupted the Astor Place show, causing it to close early. They tore up seats and threw everything at the stage from rotten eggs and fruits to shoes and bottles—in an earlier performance, someone tossed a half carcass of a sheep at him while he performed! Macready was determined to leave then and there, but was persuaded to attempt one more show. He shouldn’t have bothered. On the ill-fated night of May 10, Forrest’s supporters gathered en masse outside the theatre to protest Macready’s performance as Macbeth. It’s estimated that as many as ten thousand people came looking for trouble. Forrest was connected to some of the notorious New York gangs of the time, who probably lent a helping hand in the form of criminals eager to cause disruption. Knowing that there would be unrest, the police and then troops were sent in to quell the growing disorder. After warnings were issued, shots were fired, and rioting commenced.

  In the end, between twenty-five and thirty people were killed and as many as two hundred were injured. One consequence of this disturbance may have been the further separation between “high” and “low” art, such that Shakespeare and other such “respectable” art forms increasingly became the province of the upper classes, while the lower classes gravitated to vaudeville and music hall shows that often lampooned high society. Perhaps the violence of this incident convinced the working classes that they were not welcome in more fashionable circles? Since Shakespeare’s plays were a British tradition, they may have decided to favor more homegrown American arts instead. Did the curse of Macbeth damage the popularity of “high art” in America?

  A few decades later, the play raised its ugly head again, when it was rumoured that Abraham Lincoln read it the night before he was assassinated. He wasn’t viewing it at the theater when he died, so this is probably just an urban legend.

  Another Macbeth-misfortune-related story is told of Russian actor Konstantin Stanislavsky. During the dress rehearsal of the play, he apparently forgot his lines, but for whatever reason, the prompter who was supposed to provide cues (i.e., to help actors remember their lines) failed to do so. That prompter was soon found dead while still in his stage box, and his death was seen as a bad omen that ended up closing the production.

  More recently, the curse definitely seemed to befall one of the twentieth century’s greatest actors and those around him. Laurence Olivier was rehearsing for the opening night of Macbeth at the Old Vic in London in 1937. He lost his voice, which delayed the opening by four days. During the run, he narrowly escaped injury from a falling sandbag located in the wings. Lillian Baylis, the theater’s founder and manager, died of a heart attack only two days before the opening of the show (later, in 1954, a painting of Baylis at the Old Vic fell from the wall and crashed into a bar on the opening night of another production of Macbeth; this was obviously not a good omen). The play’s director and one of the actresses were injured in a taxi accident. During a preview performance, Olivier’s sword broke during a fight and a part of the blade flew into the audience, striking a man. It was a prop sword and so not sharp, but the man was so startled that he had a heart attack and died.

  Ever worse was the onstage accident in 1947 at the Oldham Coliseum Theatre in Manchester. The climactic scene was, of course, the battle between Macduff (played by Antony Oakley) and Macbeth (played by Harold Norman) for the future of Scotland. Though in the play much of this conflict happens offstage and we learn later that Macbeth has been killed, it’s always thrilling to have some of the fight shown for audiences. However, the swords being used were a little too sharp and Oakley accidentally stabbed Norman right in the chest. As the curtain fell on the scene, the curtain also fell on Norman, who died shortly afterward.

  In 1967 (one wonders if there’s something about years ending in 7?), director Peter Hall was producing the play at Stratford and had no time for such silly fears, telling everyone involved in the production to pay no attention to superstitions and focus on the show instead. Mr. Hall’s arrogance was tamed when he contracted a serious case of the shingles, which caused the play to be delayed. After it finally opened, the critical reception was lukewarm, and it was not a success.

  As recently as 2013, an actor performing the play in Manchester, England, with Kenneth Branagh was struck by Branagh’s sword during a performance, and had to receive medical treatment onsite. He was able to finish the performance, but went to a hospital afterward, just to be sure.

  So what does all of this mean? Go to any Internet forum about the Macbeth superstition and you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds, of anecdotal accounts in the comments from people who claim that they or someone they know tempted fate by uttering the forbidden word or even simply acting in the play, and then later suffered the consequences. Stories of injuries (a broken bone, a bad cut needing stitches), disappearing or damaged props, a collapsed theater roof, a car accident the following day, and so on are so common that they are rather unsettling to read. All of this lore of curses and black magic makes for splendid urban legend stuff, but many in the profession swear that it’s true. Despite the uncounted thousands of productions of the play that have gone off without a hitch over the centuries, many actors would still prefer not to tempt fate.

  The curse of Ophelia?

  It’s not just Macbeth that potentially brings disaster on actors and companies. Over the centuries, some have claimed that actresses who take on the role of the mad and doomed Ophelia from Hamlet are beset with problems in their personal lives. Realistically, this is just a prime example of anecdotal correlation being mistaken for causation, because large numbers of players have acted in the role and come out just fine. Meanwhile, terrible and horrible things have befallen those who never set foot in a theater or read a word of “the Danish Play.” But in the interest of perpetuating superstitious fears, here are few actresses who took on the part and suffered calamities later:

  Susan Mountfort (fl. later seventee
nth century): A noted actress of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Susan Mountfort (or Montford) had played the role to some acclaim, but was later betrayed by her love and lost her mind. She was kept under constant watch, but in 1720 escaped and made her way to her local theater, where Hamlet was showing. When Ophelia was set to appear in her scene of madness, Susan rushed to the stage and displaced the actress playing her. One account from the time notes: “She was in truth Ophelia herself, to the amazement of the performers as well as of the audience—nature having made this last effort, her vital powers failed her and she died soon after.”

  Sarah Siddons (1755–1831): A popular Welsh actress who first played the part in 1785, she was also known for her portrayal of Lady Macbeth—thus bringing another whole potential curse down on her! She married young, but the marriage was unhappy and five of her seven children died. It’s worth remembering, however, that infant and child mortality were still pretty high in those days.

  Mary Catherine Bolton (1790–1830): She first played the role in 1813 and caught the eye of one Edward Hovell-Thurlow, Second Baron Thurlow. She later married him and enjoyed wealth and privilege, but of course it would not last. After the baron’s death in 1829, she was inconsolable, and she died less than a year later at the young age of thirty-nine. But she did have fifteen happy years and her sons survived.

  In the twentieth century, a whole series of actresses who played the character were noted as later having significant personal troubles, including Jean Simmons, Marianne Faithfull, Helena Bonham Carter, and Kate Winslet. The fact is that, unfortunately, anyone can have tragedies befall them, so it seems fairly silly and even in bad taste to link a dramatic role with personal misfortune, but people seem to love looking for explanations for things, no matter how ridiculous and far out they are.