And while Egan’s point that the Brome and Heywood passage is an allusion to Macbeth seems fair enough, one could argue that it doesn’t actually amount to evidence that the play itself was already by then thought to be cursed. Perhaps we ought to ‘be tempted to assign the origin of the superstition about Macbeth to the nineteenth-century theatre industry’, after all.
Also, how about some hard evidence that ‘King James I banned the play for about five years after he first saw it, in 1606’?
Yes, I’d like to see the evidence for that–that’s one that I’d never heard before. Upon googling I find it in a bunch of spots, none with decent-sounding attribution. It strikes me as odd because James was nuts for witches and the legend is that the play was written for him (it seems odd that we have only ever called this a legend, which leads me to think that there may be even less hard evidence for the supposed banning–if he banned it, we could be sure at least that he had seen it). I recently read Asimov’s Shakespeare and he speculates in the other direction–that James was likely to have “learnedly” discussed witches and theology between the acts. The stuff I have read, older (either because I read it long ago during my schooling or because I read older stuff recently) definitly does not mention a banning. Is this a recent addition to the legend canon?
I used to have a TD who would say, “Don’t worry about quality; it’s only supposed for four weeks, and if it fails catastrophically, they’re only actors. We can get more.”
I’ll amend the Staff Report to reflect that the Hal Berrige story is likely mythical. Thanks! On the banning by King J, I’ll try to see if I can find some more documentation, but my life is kinda hectic just now, so it will have to wait a few weeks.
I used several different sources (books) that seemed to be reasonably historical; however, it’s hard to know what’s what and what came from where, and digging seems to have got me into some circularity (e.g., A copies from B without citation, so it looks like they’re independent scholarly sources… a serious problem with internet research. )
The woman who directed the Macbeth that I stagemanaged says that the bad luck stories come up when they started to cut the Hecate scenes entirely. (we did cut the singing cat in ours) However with Hecate back in the play, things run smoothly.
Sir Ian McKellen, who was appearing in the Scottish play, was pounded to within an inch of his life - including being hit by lightning and having the theater sign fall on top of him - when Bart repeatedly said the play’s name on The Simpsons.
It’s also the play being performed at the beginning and end of the Star Trek episode “The Conscience of the King” (title taken from Hamlet, as it happens), and you could say it’s unlucky for both the father and the daughter who lead the Karidian Company of Players.
Actually, I’ve read that report (it’s a very interesting one) and I don’t think it did cover my suggestion that some plays, including the Scottish play, are harder to produce competently - they’re either wonderful or awful. If I missed that section, or if my suggestion isn’t robust enough to count, I apologise.
If I can blow my own horn, there was a thread some time ago started by yours truly on this very subject when I first read of the real witches cursing the play aspect. CKDH hisself said it was being considered for a staff report. Three years plus is a while for it to steep, I guess.
One of the most chilling examples of the Macbeth curse occurred during a performance of Verdi’s opera version of the play at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1988. An 82-year-old opera fan fell to his death from the balcony of the house during intermission, an apparent suicide. The remainder of the performance, which was being broadcast live on radio, was cancelled.
I entirely understand. My query was a bit unfair, in that I’m fully aware that trying to trace such a claim back through the secondary literature can be just about the most difficult and potentially soul-destroying type of historical research. Unless everyone carefully cites their sources, which, of course, they don’t, you can never be sure what you might have missed. Especially when dealing with an historiography as vast as that about Shakespeare over the past four centuries.
Just a couple of observations. Schoenbaum’s Documentary Life makes no mention of a royal ban, even to discount the idea, so the chances of there being any ‘hard’ evidence are likely to be nil.
Moreover, if it was true, such a claim would surely be a key piece of evidence for the dating of the play. It has often been suggested that Macbeth was written for the visit of James’s brother-in-law, Christian IV, to London in 1606. Convincing evidence that James saw the play, let alone that he had a view on it, would be an important angle on that debate. But this never gets mentioned when the experts discuss possible dates. Why? Presumably because that evidence is less than convincing. As it is, there is general agreement that, apart from the possible literary allusions by Middleton and Beaumont, the earliest undoubted reference to the play is Simon Forman’s diary entry of 1610. Any claim that James had banned the play must be later. Very much later would be my hunch.
There’s also the point that in the scene where the witches conjure up Banquo’s ghost for Macbeth, Banquo points to a long line of kings that descend from him, and rule over all of Britain. That has normally been considered a compliment to King James, since Banquo was one of his ancestors. I would be surprised that he would have banned a play that attested to his long royal lineage.
Ther reference to the treble sceptres is usually taken to mean that some of the later kings being shown will rule over the three kingdoms of Scotland, England and Ireland - a comforting prediction that had come true in the person of James VI/I, whose lineage would stretch out to the “crack of doom” - a prediction that so far is still on track, since Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of James (albeit not according to strict rules of primogeniture).
The practice of resorting to the Royal Touch to cure scrofula continued until George I dropped it as “too Catholic”. The particular king in question would St Edward the Confessor.
Or at least was reputed to be. In actual history, the fathers of what would later be called the House of Stuart appear to have been living in Brittany.
