The Legend of The Scottish Play

The Legend of "The Scottish Play"

1) Background

I interviewed a freshman theater major at the University on the topic of urban legends. The interview was conducted in my dormitory room. The nineteen-year-old female college student is originally from Delaware, and her parents are both real estate appraisers. When inquired about urban legends, she recalled the theater lore and superstitions that she knew intimately as an actress. The interviewee was particularly eager to talk about the curse associated with Macbeth, the Scottish Play.

2) Transcription of the Legend of the Scottish Play

Macbeth! That’s not a superstition! That’s truth and fact! [gestures emphatically with fist] If you do Macbeth, something bad will happen; if you say, “Macbeth” in the theater, something bad will happen. I have true stories to testify to that one. Let’s see, umm what show were we doing?... Our Town, we were doing Our Town. And there are [clears throat] people in my school like to mess with people like me who believe in the Macbeth superstition, and so they’ll go into the theater and they’ll just go, “MACBETH!” and I will freak out and I tell them to go outside and spin around three times and spit over their left shoulder, because that’s the [antidote]. But they don’t, because they’re trying to mess with me, and something bad always happens. So when we’re doing Macbeth, this kid, who is one of the stage managers, I wasn’t there when it happened so I couldn’t make him go outside, but my director told me that he said, “Macbeth,” in the theatre, and so I was like freaking out and everyone was like, “don’t freak out, it’s not a big deal,” but it was, because our curtain broke. That day. Later that day, the curtain broke. It was two days before the show. Yeah. His fault. Another example. We were doing Romeo and Juliet and okay, now I know this is not an accident, but it doesn’t matter. Still, somebody said “Macbeth” in the theatre, and I told them to go outside and spin around but they didn’t do it, and then somebody stole all my costumes, and I was Juliet so it was kind of a big deal and kind of bad.

It came from, because the um, the spells that are said