1
00:00:00,560 --> 00:00:03,760
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how

2
00:00:03,800 --> 00:00:14,120
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

3
00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:17,360
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm fair Dowdy, and today we're

4
00:00:17,480 --> 00:00:21,360
Speaker 1: revealing a few personal stories because we're talking about plays

5
00:00:21,880 --> 00:00:24,840
Speaker 1: and we have both been in plays. Um Mostly I

6
00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:27,560
Speaker 1: just liked reading aloud in class, but occasionally I would

7
00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:30,320
Speaker 1: get brave enough to be in one, and my shining

8
00:00:30,400 --> 00:00:33,480
Speaker 1: moment was as Katie the Cook and Meet Me in St.

9
00:00:33,479 --> 00:00:36,520
Speaker 1: Louis in middle school, in which I danced I Think

10
00:00:36,600 --> 00:00:39,839
Speaker 1: Maybe and sang in an apron Katie the Cook that

11
00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:43,839
Speaker 1: named after you. I'm hoping they didn't pick me just

12
00:00:43,920 --> 00:00:45,960
Speaker 1: because of my name and more because they thought I

13
00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:49,200
Speaker 1: was incredibly talented. But I was also in some sort

14
00:00:49,200 --> 00:00:53,680
Speaker 1: of chorus in Oklahoma, and as a kindergartener in Mary Poppins,

15
00:00:53,720 --> 00:00:56,360
Speaker 1: where I got to wear pink Jammy's and my mom

16
00:00:56,400 --> 00:00:59,920
Speaker 1: put lipstick on me, which was a huge deal, definitely.

17
00:01:00,440 --> 00:01:02,880
Speaker 1: But I am most well known in my family for

18
00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:05,920
Speaker 1: a preschool performance in which I got on stage with

19
00:01:06,040 --> 00:01:08,400
Speaker 1: the rest of my class and then went and sat

20
00:01:08,440 --> 00:01:10,080
Speaker 1: down on the edge of it with my head in

21
00:01:10,160 --> 00:01:13,520
Speaker 1: my hands and refused to saying we have photo evidence

22
00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:17,840
Speaker 1: of my grumpy, little little three year old things. Do

23
00:01:17,880 --> 00:01:21,120
Speaker 1: you have a history on the stage, Um, yeah, I

24
00:01:21,160 --> 00:01:23,400
Speaker 1: guess I've been in a few plays. I probably my

25
00:01:23,400 --> 00:01:26,480
Speaker 1: biggest one came in elementary school. My class wrote a

26
00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:30,880
Speaker 1: play called The Power Plan about power struggles on the playground,

27
00:01:31,560 --> 00:01:34,440
Speaker 1: and uh, I was the class president in the play,

28
00:01:34,480 --> 00:01:36,679
Speaker 1: I had a solo. I had to stand on the

29
00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:39,880
Speaker 1: stage all by myself and saying in front of the audience.

30
00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:43,559
Speaker 1: It was all pretty scary, but kind of awesome too.

31
00:01:43,800 --> 00:01:46,679
Speaker 1: Not gonna lie, Um, I guess. Let's see. In high

32
00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:49,920
Speaker 1: school I was in Fumed Oak. That was a very

33
00:01:50,040 --> 00:01:52,760
Speaker 1: violent play. So that was exciting. How are struggles and

34
00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:56,560
Speaker 1: violence the Inner world of Sarah Dowdy? Yeah, Probably the

35
00:01:56,600 --> 00:01:59,080
Speaker 1: best part in that was there was supposed to be

36
00:01:59,120 --> 00:02:02,320
Speaker 1: a violent conference tation about more ham for dinner. We

37
00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:05,480
Speaker 1: were a little lax on our props, and so we

38
00:02:05,520 --> 00:02:07,600
Speaker 1: didn't bring a ham in. We brought a bag of

39
00:02:07,640 --> 00:02:10,840
Speaker 1: potato chips and I was playing the wife, and so

40
00:02:10,919 --> 00:02:13,320
Speaker 1: at one point the guy who's playing my husband said

41
00:02:13,919 --> 00:02:17,079
Speaker 1: more potato chips for dinner and throws some on the floor.

42
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:20,600
Speaker 1: I prefer the hands. That's a legitimate complaint. I would

43
00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:24,079
Speaker 1: say your star, you're on top. Somebody bring you some hams.

44
00:02:24,080 --> 00:02:27,480
Speaker 1: You might say in dirty rock. But this is actually

45
00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:29,800
Speaker 1: leading up to a point. Believe us or not. Um.

46
00:02:29,919 --> 00:02:32,040
Speaker 1: You know how you're never supposed to say good luck

47
00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:34,720
Speaker 1: in a theater, you say break a leg or something,

48
00:02:34,720 --> 00:02:36,680
Speaker 1: and definitely in belly dance we do the same thing.

49
00:02:36,680 --> 00:02:39,240
Speaker 1: We say break a hip or Sarah says break a snake.

50
00:02:39,680 --> 00:02:43,639
Speaker 1: But there are more theatrical superstitions than that, and one

51
00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:47,400
Speaker 1: is that you never say Macbeth in the theater unless

52
00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:51,520
Speaker 1: you're performing. Yeah, call it the Scottish play. And that

53
00:02:51,680 --> 00:02:56,359
Speaker 1: is because there's some scary stuff attached to it. This

54
00:02:56,400 --> 00:02:59,280
Speaker 1: is a Halloween episode, so you can guess where it's headed.

55
00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:02,880
Speaker 1: Suppose said Lee, there is a Macbeth curse. So to

56
00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:05,800
Speaker 1: start it off, let's give you a little recap of

57
00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:09,959
Speaker 1: the plot of Shakespeare's Macbeth. It is a bloody tragedy.

58
00:03:10,120 --> 00:03:13,639
Speaker 1: It starts off with three weird sisters who tell Macbeth,

59
00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:17,280
Speaker 1: a relative of the King Duncan, that he himself will

60
00:03:17,320 --> 00:03:21,680
Speaker 1: be king. They also tell another general, Banqueo, that his

61
00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:24,880
Speaker 1: sons and descendants will be kings, but he himself never

62
00:03:24,919 --> 00:03:29,160
Speaker 1: will be so Macbeth's wife, Lady Macbeth, vows to help

63
00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:33,320
Speaker 1: him achieve this goal of ruling the kingdom by convincing

64
00:03:33,400 --> 00:03:36,840
Speaker 1: him to kill King Duncan, his relative. And this is

65
00:03:36,840 --> 00:03:40,040
Speaker 1: only the first of many murders in the play. Um

66
00:03:40,120 --> 00:03:43,240
Speaker 1: Macbeth is behind the murder of guards, the Thane of

67
00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:47,360
Speaker 1: Fife's mcduff's family and everyone in his castle. Lady Macbeth

68
00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:50,640
Speaker 1: commits suicide. She's unable to wash the blood from her hands,

69
00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:53,680
Speaker 1: and Macbeth is haunted by the ghost of Banquo, and

70
00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:57,280
Speaker 1: the play ends with a battle in which McDuff kills

71
00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:01,280
Speaker 1: Macbeth and Duncan's son Malcolm has the throne. This is

72
00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:05,960
Speaker 1: worse than Lizzie Borden, classic Shakespeare tragedy, everybody dead on

73
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:07,960
Speaker 1: the stage at the end of the play. But there

74
00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:12,080
Speaker 1: was in fact a real Macbeth. Yeah. So Macbeth was

75
00:04:12,160 --> 00:04:16,559
Speaker 1: an aristocrat in eleventh century Scotland, and during this time

76
00:04:16,680 --> 00:04:21,279
Speaker 1: there wasn't primagenitor like we think of most rulers today.

77
00:04:21,320 --> 00:04:24,560
Speaker 1: You know, your your son becomes king or some relative

78
00:04:24,680 --> 00:04:30,560
Speaker 1: descendant becomes king after you die. There wasn't any firstborn inheriting. Instead,

79
00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:34,080
Speaker 1: kings would pick their successors, and so you can imagine

80
00:04:34,680 --> 00:04:36,760
Speaker 1: that would lead to a lot of strife because it's

81
00:04:36,760 --> 00:04:39,760
Speaker 1: not just the kid you ended up with, it's the

82
00:04:39,800 --> 00:04:43,400
Speaker 1: rest of the nobleman too. Yeah. So Macbeth's father was

83
00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:47,640
Speaker 1: killed by Macbeth's cousins who wanted his throne. Later in life,

84
00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:51,000
Speaker 1: Macbeth revenged his father by killing them and married one

85
00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:54,440
Speaker 1: of their widows. Grew up the real life Lady Macbeth.

86
00:04:54,520 --> 00:04:57,200
Speaker 1: And we're not sure that name is is going to

87
00:04:57,320 --> 00:04:59,960
Speaker 1: make a comeback as a baby name. So we're reques

88
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:03,599
Speaker 1: saying that a listener could perhaps name a pet after

89
00:05:03,960 --> 00:05:06,800
Speaker 1: grew up, you know, like grew k Lambert. You know,

90
00:05:06,960 --> 00:05:09,760
Speaker 1: I don't really think that's gonna work. Perhaps if I

91
00:05:09,880 --> 00:05:13,720
Speaker 1: take my imaginary future husband's last name, we can reconsider it.

92
00:05:14,200 --> 00:05:16,560
Speaker 1: But Macbeth had a title, though it wasn't the thing

93
00:05:16,640 --> 00:05:20,440
Speaker 1: of Glamis, and the King, Malcolm the Second, who is

94
00:05:20,520 --> 00:05:23,880
Speaker 1: king at the time of Macbeth, decided to institute this

95
00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:27,440
Speaker 1: rule of primogeniture and ended up choosing his nephew Duncan,

96
00:05:27,520 --> 00:05:31,680
Speaker 1: and the nobles were angered, as Scottish nobles always are

97
00:05:31,800 --> 00:05:34,520
Speaker 1: in every single podcast we have ever done well and

98
00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:37,240
Speaker 1: and part of this is you know, maybe personal, why

99
00:05:37,279 --> 00:05:40,760
Speaker 1: didn't you pick me? But also Duncan just isn't much

100
00:05:41,279 --> 00:05:44,560
Speaker 1: of a ruler. He's not very good in battle. He

101
00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:47,960
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like he should be king. And so Macbeth

102
00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:51,279
Speaker 1: killed Duncan in battle, and we should note that this

103
00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:54,120
Speaker 1: is not a battle against each other, perhaps a friendly

104
00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:57,960
Speaker 1: fire sort of situation. Yeah, and then Macbeth in turn

105
00:05:58,200 --> 00:06:01,280
Speaker 1: is eventually killed by Duncan's son, who is also named

106
00:06:01,320 --> 00:06:05,840
Speaker 1: Malcolm Um. But Macbeth didn't have a bad reputation. I mean,

107
00:06:05,839 --> 00:06:10,480
Speaker 1: this seems like your average average stuff back then, just

108
00:06:10,960 --> 00:06:14,920
Speaker 1: killing the king kind of semi honorably, maybe not so much,

109
00:06:15,400 --> 00:06:19,480
Speaker 1: nothing terrible. So where did the bad rep come from? Well,

110
00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:23,200
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's Macbeth was written sometime in the early sixteen hundreds,

111
00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:26,760
Speaker 1: which is a good five hundred years after Macbeth's life,

112
00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:30,800
Speaker 1: And of course history loves embellishment over the ages, and

113
00:06:30,839 --> 00:06:35,359
Speaker 1: Shakespeare used Raphael Holland Sheds Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland,

114
00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:39,120
Speaker 1: which was published in fifteen seventies seven, as background information.

115
00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:41,000
Speaker 1: But you know, he never planned for it to be

116
00:06:41,520 --> 00:06:44,400
Speaker 1: historically accurate. The play. He wanted to build on that. Yeah,

117
00:06:44,520 --> 00:06:49,280
Speaker 1: it's a historical drama, not an actual account. So Holland

118
00:06:49,279 --> 00:06:52,839
Speaker 1: shed had, of course built on some earlier versions of

119
00:06:52,880 --> 00:06:56,279
Speaker 1: the story, and through the centuries we had all these

120
00:06:56,320 --> 00:07:01,640
Speaker 1: little bits added in, like the imaginary banquet and this evil,

121
00:07:01,800 --> 00:07:05,120
Speaker 1: scary Lady Macbeth, and those were added in the fourteen

122
00:07:05,200 --> 00:07:08,479
Speaker 1: hundreds and the early hundreds, So getting a little closer

123
00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:11,440
Speaker 1: to the story we know today, poor grew up And yeah,

124
00:07:11,480 --> 00:07:14,480
Speaker 1: there was no real life counterpart for Banquo, And that's

125
00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:17,040
Speaker 1: a little bit of a big deal because if you

126
00:07:17,080 --> 00:07:20,000
Speaker 1: remember how the witches in the play promise him this

127
00:07:20,120 --> 00:07:24,240
Speaker 1: line of kings, he was supposedly um the start of

128
00:07:24,280 --> 00:07:27,240
Speaker 1: the Steward line, and I think of who's king when

129
00:07:27,800 --> 00:07:30,320
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's putting on this play, well exactly, and that may

130
00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:33,280
Speaker 1: be part of the reason that he's turned into such

131
00:07:33,320 --> 00:07:36,600
Speaker 1: an innocent character in Shakespeare's play, which he wasn't in

132
00:07:36,680 --> 00:07:41,920
Speaker 1: earlier versions, trying to impress the James Laster King good. So,

133
00:07:42,040 --> 00:07:47,000
Speaker 1: according to the legend, the very first performance of the

134
00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:50,520
Speaker 1: play Macbeth in sixteen o six had the actor playing

135
00:07:50,760 --> 00:07:54,880
Speaker 1: Lady Macbeth, who was a boy falling ill and dying

136
00:07:55,680 --> 00:07:59,920
Speaker 1: right before the start of a mysterious fever, and perhaps

137
00:08:00,080 --> 00:08:02,840
Speaker 1: Shakespeare took over the role for him and was really

138
00:08:02,960 --> 00:08:05,200
Speaker 1: terrible in it and therefore didn't want to hear the

139
00:08:05,200 --> 00:08:08,040
Speaker 1: play's name again. I mean, if you're awful you walk

140
00:08:08,080 --> 00:08:09,760
Speaker 1: on stage, is like, don't say the name to me.

141
00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:14,040
Speaker 1: Embarrassing performance. Um. There's another theory, though, and that's that

142
00:08:14,080 --> 00:08:19,520
Speaker 1: the witches incantations were real, and they were real chance

143
00:08:19,600 --> 00:08:23,680
Speaker 1: that Shakespeare lifted, and so they cursed the play forever more.

144
00:08:24,080 --> 00:08:26,960
Speaker 1: But why would Shakespeare have done something like that? King

145
00:08:27,080 --> 00:08:30,040
Speaker 1: James had authored a book on demonology, which is one

146
00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:32,560
Speaker 1: of his chief interests, and as we mentioned, of course

147
00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:36,400
Speaker 1: William Shakespeare wanted his favor. But the story goes that

148
00:08:36,480 --> 00:08:41,080
Speaker 1: James hated the play and possibly banned it from being performed.

149
00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:44,440
Speaker 1: So that brings us to the stories of the curse.

150
00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:47,199
Speaker 1: And we have to preface this by saying we're not

151
00:08:47,280 --> 00:08:50,280
Speaker 1: saying that any of these stories are true, because only

152
00:08:50,320 --> 00:08:53,120
Speaker 1: a few of them can be corroborated. We'll try to

153
00:08:53,160 --> 00:08:55,200
Speaker 1: point out some of the ones that can be that

154
00:08:55,240 --> 00:08:57,320
Speaker 1: we think are true. Yes, Um, but these are the

155
00:08:57,360 --> 00:08:59,680
Speaker 1: stories that so many of you sent us, and the

156
00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:03,280
Speaker 1: ones that you'll see most frequently mentioned about the curse.

157
00:09:03,320 --> 00:09:05,679
Speaker 1: So remember these are not all real. We're just telling

158
00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:09,040
Speaker 1: you what people say. This is a podcast about the

159
00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:12,319
Speaker 1: curse exactly. So here goes the hearsay. All right, we're

160
00:09:12,320 --> 00:09:15,880
Speaker 1: going to start in the seventeenth century. In one performance,

161
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:20,560
Speaker 1: the actor playing Macbeth supposedly used a real knife instead

162
00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:23,520
Speaker 1: of a stage prop and killed the actor playing Duncan

163
00:09:23,640 --> 00:09:27,560
Speaker 1: in front of a live audience. During the eighteenth century,

164
00:09:27,640 --> 00:09:30,480
Speaker 1: at the opening day of a performance in London. It

165
00:09:30,600 --> 00:09:33,440
Speaker 1: also marked the day of one of the worst storms

166
00:09:33,440 --> 00:09:36,000
Speaker 1: ever to hit the city. All right, This next one

167
00:09:36,120 --> 00:09:39,440
Speaker 1: is one of my favorites. In another performance, we have

168
00:09:39,640 --> 00:09:43,600
Speaker 1: an aristocrat walking across the stage. We should mention that

169
00:09:43,840 --> 00:09:46,680
Speaker 1: sometimes the very best people would get to sit on

170
00:09:46,720 --> 00:09:49,160
Speaker 1: the side of the stage, So he just walks across

171
00:09:49,200 --> 00:09:51,079
Speaker 1: the stage in the middle of the play to be

172
00:09:51,160 --> 00:09:54,480
Speaker 1: answering your cell phones. It's probably worse than that, but

173
00:09:54,760 --> 00:09:57,920
Speaker 1: going to talk to his friend. The actors got very

174
00:09:57,960 --> 00:10:00,800
Speaker 1: angry and ran him out, so he came back with

175
00:10:00,960 --> 00:10:04,839
Speaker 1: a posse of friends and burned the whole place down.

176
00:10:05,480 --> 00:10:10,200
Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy five, famed British actress Sarah Siddons, who

177
00:10:10,280 --> 00:10:13,040
Speaker 1: was most famous for her portrayal of the Lady Macbeth

178
00:10:13,480 --> 00:10:16,320
Speaker 1: was almost attacked by an audience member, So such as

179
00:10:16,400 --> 00:10:20,160
Speaker 1: the power of theater. Moving on to the nineteenth century,

180
00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:22,440
Speaker 1: this is a pretty good one too. This one's my

181
00:10:22,559 --> 00:10:25,120
Speaker 1: very favorite. Can I steal this home from? Okay, So

182
00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:27,720
Speaker 1: we're in the mid eighteen hundreds and there are two

183
00:10:27,760 --> 00:10:31,560
Speaker 1: actors who hate each other. One is English William McCready

184
00:10:31,679 --> 00:10:35,240
Speaker 1: and one is American Edwin Forrest. And Forest is said

185
00:10:35,240 --> 00:10:38,280
Speaker 1: to have started this whole feud by being a very

186
00:10:38,400 --> 00:10:42,240
Speaker 1: rude audience member at a McCready performance in London. So

187
00:10:42,280 --> 00:10:45,840
Speaker 1: they both stage different productions of Macbeth at the same

188
00:10:45,880 --> 00:10:50,000
Speaker 1: time in New York City, and supporters of Forest through

189
00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:53,400
Speaker 1: stuff at McCready while he was on stage in his performance,

190
00:10:53,400 --> 00:10:55,600
Speaker 1: which I mean it sounds like a cartoon, like throwing

191
00:10:55,640 --> 00:10:58,679
Speaker 1: tomatoes at someone. So then there was a riot known

192
00:10:58,720 --> 00:11:01,320
Speaker 1: as the astor placed right it, and the militia came

193
00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:05,559
Speaker 1: and shot just at the crowd. More than twenty people

194
00:11:05,640 --> 00:11:09,400
Speaker 1: died and anywhere between thirty and a hundred people were injured.

195
00:11:09,400 --> 00:11:13,160
Speaker 1: It depends on what you're reading, which is absolutely insane. Well,

196
00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:17,720
Speaker 1: maybe double the productions, double the curse too. So moving

197
00:11:17,720 --> 00:11:22,240
Speaker 1: on to a very famous incident involving the curse. One

198
00:11:22,280 --> 00:11:26,319
Speaker 1: week in eighteen sixty five, President Abraham Lincoln was reading

199
00:11:26,400 --> 00:11:32,160
Speaker 1: from his favorite play, reading his favorite passage about Duncan's assassination.

200
00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:36,680
Speaker 1: The next week he was assassinated. Guess what play he

201
00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:41,439
Speaker 1: was at Macbeth. And in another incident in the nineteenth century,

202
00:11:41,440 --> 00:11:45,760
Speaker 1: an actor accidentally seriously injured another one with a sword.

203
00:11:46,200 --> 00:11:50,280
Speaker 1: And in the nineteen twenties, Lionel Barrymore's performance as Macbeth

204
00:11:50,520 --> 00:11:54,320
Speaker 1: was reviewed so scathingly that he never got on a

205
00:11:54,360 --> 00:11:58,160
Speaker 1: Broadway stage again. So we're ruining careers now as well

206
00:11:58,200 --> 00:12:01,200
Speaker 1: as accidentally or purposely adding people. Yeah, we have a

207
00:12:01,200 --> 00:12:04,760
Speaker 1: few more of those stage accidents though. The British actress

208
00:12:04,760 --> 00:12:08,679
Speaker 1: Sybil Thorndyke was almost strangled by an actor, which it

209
00:12:08,760 --> 00:12:11,400
Speaker 1: seems like it would be hard to do, accidentally almost

210
00:12:11,400 --> 00:12:16,080
Speaker 1: strangle someone. Maybe not accident, it's just a really good actress.

211
00:12:16,120 --> 00:12:19,440
Speaker 1: And then at a London staging a set collapsed and

212
00:12:19,679 --> 00:12:22,520
Speaker 1: hit the cast, and there was also a fire. In

213
00:12:22,559 --> 00:12:26,680
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, one actress playing Lady Macbeth died right

214
00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:31,000
Speaker 1: before the last dress rehearsal, and supposedly during a nineteen

215
00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:35,000
Speaker 1: thirty four production, an actor went mute on stage and

216
00:12:35,040 --> 00:12:37,360
Speaker 1: the guy who took over for him got a fever

217
00:12:37,440 --> 00:12:39,960
Speaker 1: and went to the hospital. Or depending on which story

218
00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,079
Speaker 1: you read, the one actor went mute from a fever

219
00:12:43,200 --> 00:12:47,640
Speaker 1: and had to be hospitalized. Again, there's you know, depending

220
00:12:47,640 --> 00:12:51,360
Speaker 1: on what you're in the purse rumors all right. In

221
00:12:51,679 --> 00:12:55,360
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, or Sinwells put on an all black

222
00:12:55,400 --> 00:13:00,680
Speaker 1: production in Harlem, and there was a Haitian witch who

223
00:13:00,800 --> 00:13:03,240
Speaker 1: had a role in the play, and when one of

224
00:13:03,240 --> 00:13:07,800
Speaker 1: the critics panned the production, he and the drummers, he

225
00:13:07,920 --> 00:13:10,199
Speaker 1: being the witch, the witch doctor and some of the

226
00:13:10,280 --> 00:13:14,440
Speaker 1: drummers in the play cursed the critic, like really cursed him,

227
00:13:14,840 --> 00:13:20,120
Speaker 1: and he died of pneumonia. So oh. Also in the

228
00:13:20,200 --> 00:13:24,000
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, Lawrence Olivier was almost crushed by a stage

229
00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:27,240
Speaker 1: weight and in a car accident on separate occasions, and

230
00:13:27,280 --> 00:13:29,960
Speaker 1: the proprietor of the theater had a fatal heart attack

231
00:13:30,080 --> 00:13:33,200
Speaker 1: on opening night and her dog died on the same day,

232
00:13:33,640 --> 00:13:36,240
Speaker 1: Or again depending on what you read, the proprietor died

233
00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:38,920
Speaker 1: during a dress rehearsal, and it was an actress who

234
00:13:38,960 --> 00:13:42,040
Speaker 1: was in the car accident. Then in the nineteen forties,

235
00:13:42,200 --> 00:13:45,640
Speaker 1: there was a very unlucky staging in nineteen forty two

236
00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:49,280
Speaker 1: when two of the witches and Duncan died and the

237
00:13:49,280 --> 00:13:51,760
Speaker 1: set designer killed himself, and this is a this is

238
00:13:51,760 --> 00:13:55,120
Speaker 1: a likely one. In nineteen forty seven in England, one

239
00:13:55,200 --> 00:13:59,480
Speaker 1: Mcabeth Harold Norman was accidentally stabbed with the sword during

240
00:13:59,520 --> 00:14:02,559
Speaker 1: the end fight scene and died. And the kicker is

241
00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:05,160
Speaker 1: that right before he said he didn't believe in the

242
00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:08,840
Speaker 1: curse and his ghost haunts the theater. And then this

243
00:14:08,920 --> 00:14:12,240
Speaker 1: is a pretty good one. To one. Actress Diana Wynyard

244
00:14:12,679 --> 00:14:16,360
Speaker 1: walked off the stage while sleepwalking as Lady Macbeth in

245
00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:20,320
Speaker 1: n I mean she wasn't just squinting her eyes kind

246
00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:23,440
Speaker 1: of fake closing them. She had them shut and walked

247
00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:27,240
Speaker 1: off the stage right into the orchestra pit, which was

248
00:14:28,080 --> 00:14:31,680
Speaker 1: like a fifteen foot drop or something. She must have

249
00:14:31,760 --> 00:14:35,240
Speaker 1: not been too cursed though, because she got right up

250
00:14:35,280 --> 00:14:38,120
Speaker 1: from the fall. The show must go on. Sarah. In

251
00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:42,360
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, during a Bermuda staging, supposedly during an

252
00:14:42,400 --> 00:14:45,800
Speaker 1: attack scene, these flames were blown into the audience near

253
00:14:45,840 --> 00:14:49,680
Speaker 1: the castle attack and Charlton Heston who's playing Macbeth, was

254
00:14:49,720 --> 00:14:54,720
Speaker 1: severely burned, and Olivier in another production almost blinded another actress.

255
00:14:54,720 --> 00:14:58,280
Speaker 1: So we're thinking, I'm thinking like maybe that was his

256
00:14:58,440 --> 00:15:03,240
Speaker 1: last taking new role. Um the sixties skipped the curse

257
00:15:03,280 --> 00:15:07,360
Speaker 1: skips the sixties, so they were busy. And then in

258
00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:11,560
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies there's an actor's strike and fires and

259
00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:16,640
Speaker 1: multiple robberies. In Planski's ninety one film, a camera operator

260
00:15:16,720 --> 00:15:19,600
Speaker 1: was almost killed. And then finally we get to the

261
00:15:19,680 --> 00:15:23,240
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties where in nine and one production there were

262
00:15:23,280 --> 00:15:26,880
Speaker 1: twenty six cases of flu, lots of injuries, lots of directors,

263
00:15:27,280 --> 00:15:30,040
Speaker 1: lots of actors, and lots of stage managers. That doesn't

264
00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:33,440
Speaker 1: sound like occurs so much to me. It's just a bad,

265
00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:38,359
Speaker 1: prescarably run production. Yes, but we've got some possible explanations

266
00:15:38,440 --> 00:15:40,920
Speaker 1: of course for this. Yeah, for this high rate of

267
00:15:41,160 --> 00:15:45,720
Speaker 1: accidents and trouble with Macbeth. One thing, there are a

268
00:15:45,760 --> 00:15:48,000
Speaker 1: lot of fight scenes and that equals a lot of

269
00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:50,760
Speaker 1: chances for injury. You noticed most of what we read

270
00:15:50,800 --> 00:15:56,600
Speaker 1: here is uh, people getting stabbed accidentally or walking off

271
00:15:56,600 --> 00:16:00,160
Speaker 1: the stage accidentally being injured in something action path act

272
00:16:00,200 --> 00:16:03,720
Speaker 1: and dramatic. And there are lots of dark scenes, of course,

273
00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:06,120
Speaker 1: and this is also a popular play, and it's a

274
00:16:06,160 --> 00:16:09,600
Speaker 1: short play, so it's been considered a good choice for

275
00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:12,680
Speaker 1: failing companies to put on. And then, of course it's

276
00:16:12,720 --> 00:16:16,200
Speaker 1: not the place fault that a company fails. It already was.

277
00:16:16,360 --> 00:16:19,280
Speaker 1: The play just perhaps sounded the death knell. But still

278
00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:22,240
Speaker 1: that ties into the whole curse thing, and all plays

279
00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,920
Speaker 1: have things go wrong. We just concentrate on Macbeth because

280
00:16:26,200 --> 00:16:28,920
Speaker 1: supposedly there is a curse, and since it is such

281
00:16:28,960 --> 00:16:32,720
Speaker 1: an old play, we've got centuries and centuries of time

282
00:16:32,800 --> 00:16:36,080
Speaker 1: for all of these things to happen. I mean, perhaps

283
00:16:36,280 --> 00:16:39,760
Speaker 1: we'll have a new one for Ibsen, say in in

284
00:16:39,800 --> 00:16:43,720
Speaker 1: a few centuries. But it's confirmation bias because you start

285
00:16:43,800 --> 00:16:46,560
Speaker 1: looking for all the things that back up your belief

286
00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:49,200
Speaker 1: instead of paying any attention to all the things that don't.

287
00:16:49,200 --> 00:16:52,560
Speaker 1: And you know, surely there's another terrible storm that's taken

288
00:16:52,640 --> 00:16:55,840
Speaker 1: place at the at the beginning of a production, or

289
00:16:55,880 --> 00:17:00,400
Speaker 1: an actor dies during a play. Those things aren't entirely unusual. Yeah,

290
00:17:00,440 --> 00:17:04,080
Speaker 1: in college, I actually did a project on theaters in

291
00:17:04,480 --> 00:17:08,199
Speaker 1: nineteenth century London, and I mean the accidents were insane.

292
00:17:08,200 --> 00:17:10,119
Speaker 1: If if you go back and look at the London

293
00:17:10,200 --> 00:17:15,240
Speaker 1: Times archives. There's just every terrible thing that could possibly

294
00:17:15,280 --> 00:17:19,199
Speaker 1: happen to you would happen during these stage productions like

295
00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:23,840
Speaker 1: fancy ones too, terrible falls and knife fights and swords

296
00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,600
Speaker 1: and falling through the trapdoor. Yeah. So I'm going to

297
00:17:27,680 --> 00:17:30,280
Speaker 1: go ahead and say that I don't think that there's

298
00:17:30,320 --> 00:17:32,320
Speaker 1: a Ma Bath curse, Sarah, But I'm not going to

299
00:17:32,400 --> 00:17:35,360
Speaker 1: say that because you don't want to harold Normana. Yeah,

300
00:17:35,400 --> 00:17:37,560
Speaker 1: the guy who says he doesn't believe in the curse.

301
00:17:37,640 --> 00:17:40,240
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if this curse extends to podcasts,

302
00:17:40,320 --> 00:17:42,879
Speaker 1: but I don't I don't want to be too bold

303
00:17:42,920 --> 00:17:45,439
Speaker 1: about it. We're more in a studio than a theater,

304
00:17:45,560 --> 00:17:49,760
Speaker 1: so I'm I mean, notice our list of curses stops

305
00:17:49,800 --> 00:17:52,520
Speaker 1: in nine. We don't know what's been going on for

306
00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:55,160
Speaker 1: the past twenty years, and if maybe the curse has

307
00:17:55,560 --> 00:17:59,040
Speaker 1: jumped to new media, is it a time for revival hubs?

308
00:17:59,440 --> 00:18:02,320
Speaker 1: Certainly mont. We do have some tips though, if you

309
00:18:02,400 --> 00:18:04,359
Speaker 1: happen to say the play's name in a theater, and

310
00:18:04,359 --> 00:18:06,560
Speaker 1: we might do it now that we're done in this

311
00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:11,240
Speaker 1: podcast in case, the tradition is that if you say Macbeth,

312
00:18:11,320 --> 00:18:14,320
Speaker 1: in a theater, you leave the room, you spend three

313
00:18:14,359 --> 00:18:17,719
Speaker 1: times over your right shoulder, you spit, and then you

314
00:18:17,800 --> 00:18:21,080
Speaker 1: knock on the door and ask to come back in.

315
00:18:21,920 --> 00:18:24,240
Speaker 1: So if there are any theater people listening who have

316
00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:28,080
Speaker 1: a Macbeth tale to tell, please email us at History

317
00:18:28,119 --> 00:18:31,639
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. And that brings

318
00:18:31,720 --> 00:18:38,639
Speaker 1: us to our listener mail for today. Brian from Brooklyn

319
00:18:38,760 --> 00:18:41,480
Speaker 1: sent us what's supposed to be a concert poster with

320
00:18:41,640 --> 00:18:44,520
Speaker 1: copies for both of us to hang in our cubes.

321
00:18:44,560 --> 00:18:48,399
Speaker 1: But it says s Y MHC Presents and these are

322
00:18:48,400 --> 00:18:51,560
Speaker 1: all bands and they're all things that were brought from

323
00:18:51,600 --> 00:18:55,640
Speaker 1: our podcast, so it's it's not obscene. For the first one,

324
00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:59,439
Speaker 1: um the penis Thieves, Moda Harri and the Sinister salam

325
00:18:59,480 --> 00:19:03,120
Speaker 1: As the murdered Meta Cheese with a special appearance by

326
00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:07,760
Speaker 1: King Ludvig. The second at the lamber Dowdy Amphitheater. It's

327
00:19:07,840 --> 00:19:12,080
Speaker 1: ten dollars and no Darnley's will be allowed to enter,

328
00:19:12,240 --> 00:19:15,280
Speaker 1: strictly enforced, and it would be strictly enforced if I

329
00:19:15,359 --> 00:19:18,040
Speaker 1: had my way. So again, you can email us at

330
00:19:18,080 --> 00:19:20,840
Speaker 1: History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We've also

331
00:19:20,960 --> 00:19:24,040
Speaker 1: got a Twitter page at mist in History, and we

332
00:19:24,119 --> 00:19:26,800
Speaker 1: have a Facebook fan page, which is a really good

333
00:19:26,800 --> 00:19:29,000
Speaker 1: way for us to keep up with you on a

334
00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:31,800
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis and respond to stuff

335
00:19:31,800 --> 00:19:33,480
Speaker 1: because it takes us a little bit when it comes

336
00:19:33,480 --> 00:19:37,440
Speaker 1: to email. And if you're looking for more on Shakespeare

337
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:42,000
Speaker 1: and Shakespearean manuscripts and theater history, you can try searching

338
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:47,400
Speaker 1: our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.

339
00:19:47,440 --> 00:19:49,960
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

340
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:52,280
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and be sure to check

341
00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:54,200
Speaker 1: out the stuff you missed in the History Glass blog

342
00:19:54,440 --> 00:20:01,199
Speaker 1: on the how stuff Works dot com home page. Wh