The Curse Of The Scottish Play: Macbeth

Macbeth is a play written by William Shakespeare, the great dramatist and poet of the English Renaissance. Since the 19th century, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear have been recognized as William Shakespeare's four great tragedies. The story of Macbeth is generally based on an ancient story in the Scottish Chronicles by Raphael hollingsant, a historian of ancient England. It mainly tells about the greed of the king and queen for power and the process of being overthrown.

The play starts with Macbeth and Banquo fight for the king's rebellion and return from the invasion.

On the way back to Scotland, they met three witches who prophecy that Macbeth would become king, and Banquo’s descendants would become king. When they are back, Macbeth was encouraged by Lady Macbeth, who is Macbeth’s wife, to murder Duncan and become king. Macbeth first killed the king Duncan under the guidance of his wife. In order to prevent others from taking the throne which would make their efforts become worthless.

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Furthermore, Macbeth kills Banquo, and the noble Macduff's wife and children. Filled with fear and suspicion, Macbeth became more and more ruthless, and eventually deserted. At the end, Macbeth faces the siege of Duncan's son and the English reinforcements. Macbeth ended up with death. The ending confirms the curse, which mentioned above. The prophecy of the three witches finally came true.

The three witches are the “protagonists” in the Macbeth curse. In 1603, when Queen Elizabeth I died, King James VI of Scotland came to London and became King James I of England.

The Elizabethan era ended and the new period began. Because of King James I’s same love of drama, London's theatres would still thrive during the new era. In addition to the love of the drama, King James had a special interest in witchcraft. He even wrote a book called 'Daemonologie'.

In 1605 - two years after James I ascended the throne - 333 qvarious upheavals began in London. The most famous of these was the gunpowder plot. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes prepared to blow up the houses of parliament in London with the king. The bonfire festival is now held across the UK to mark the 5th of November. And a doggerel. Guy Fawkes, who is said to be a distant relative of Shakespeare, is a bit of a mystery. However, Shakespeare didn't take this opportunity to find a story from horinsey's Chronicles, but combine the inspiration from the king's book of monsters, and write the classic Macbeth. With the influence of monsters, the play really seems to be cursed. It is now an unwritten rule in western theater that if you want to Play Macbeth, you should not say 'Macbeth' when you are talking, but 'The Scottish Play', otherwise bad luck will befall the theater. Indeed, countless people have been implicated in the misfortunes of the 21st century from the time the work was first staged around 1600.

At the first public performance, Hal Berridge, who played Lady Macbeth suddenly died of a serious illness, which ended up with Shakespeare performing Lady Macbeth by himself. Finally, King James I of England was so unhappy with the performance that he banned Macbeth for five years.

At a public performance in Amsterdam in 1672. In the scene where Macbeth killed King Duncan, the actor who played Macbeth replaced the dagger that was supposed to be a stage prop with a real one, and killed the supporting actor who played king Duncan in front of the audience.

In New York City in 1849 the dynamic news, Astor Place violence. At that time, New York, in the distance between the two less than 20 minutes to reach the theatre on foot, in order to compete on the same night out at the same time with Macbeth. The tragedy happened just in the evening, the two sides played Macbeth's actor theatergoers caused because of dissatisfaction with each other and not just a few violence. Violence, there are 31 people were crushed to death. President Abraham Lincoln read Macbeth's assassination of king Duncan to friends at a party in 1865, days before he was shot and killed.

European actor Malcolm Keen couldn't speak on stage in 1934, and his understudy was sent to hospital with a fever.In 1937, actor Laurence Olivier was nearly crushed by 25 falling objects when his director and actress died in a car crash on their way to the theater.In 1942, during another Macbeth production, the famous British Shakespeare actor John Gielgud's version, the three actors who played Duncan and the two witches, as well as the stage designer, committed suicide.

In 2001, during a performance by the Cambridge Shakespeare company, the actor who played Macduff broke his back, lady Macbeth hit his head, Ross tilted his toe, and two large trees fell to ruin the scene. The above are still incomplete statistics.

According to Oliver biography, “Donald Spoto, the director barely escaped death in the taxi accident; Oliver was nearly brained by a falling stage stand bag; the scenery did not fit the stage; and composer Darrius Milhaud was not happy with his musical score and kept tearing up pages of his composition” (Epstein 429). The theaters basement been filled all night with “unusual drumming and chants more weird and horrible than anything that had been heard upon the stage” (Epstein 430).

In order to figure out the truth, There was a supernatural scientist who tried to solve this curse of Macbeth with a white witch. They want to use the Macbeth's soul to return. But white wizard as a psychic who fainted when channeling ceremony, said he felt a tremendous force from his own energy, then there is the evil force made him feel very frightened. He said there must be a curse.

Thus, no one can know what Macbeth's curse is real so far, but it has said that there are two ways to break the curse: leave your compound, close the door, turn three times, swear, knock, and enter. If you don't have time for the above ritual, say 'Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” then you will be safe. Of course, now it seems that this is a very ridiculous thing, but sometimes we don’t even know whether things that we believe in is the truth or not.

Work Cited

1.”Royal Shakespeare Company, https://www.rsc.org.uk/ macbeth/about-the-play/the-scottish-play

2.Berre, David. “'MACBETH' CURSE OF THE STAGE.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 28 Jan. 1988, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1988/ 01/28/macbeth-curse- of-the-stage/b8069e4- 369d-4ef4-b772-edee79d75d5a/

3.Faires, Robert. “The Curse of the Play.”Arts - The Austin Chronicle, https://www.austinchronicle.com/a rts/2000-10-13/the-curse-of-the-play/

4.Epstein, Norrie. “The Curse of the Scottish Play.” The Friendly Shakespeare: a Thoroughly Painless Guide to the Best of the Bard. London: Penguin, 1994.