The Salmonella Curse

Macbeth is cursed apparently.  Anybody who scanned his career trajectory as depicted by Shakespeare would probably agree but I was actually referring to the play itself.  Tradition (that handy reference point when actual facts or sheer commonsense are absent or inconvenient) claims that "the Scottish Play" is cursed which makes me wonder why anyone puts it on at all.  Apparently the curse doesn't stop some people making money out of it.  To be fair with a plot line composed of equal parts of sex, murder and black magic probably the only real surprise is that it hasn't been made into a video game but surely if there was any genuine cursy activity going on surely people would be a little more hesitant about producing it.  Macbeth is ideal curse material of course, what with people getting murdered all over the place and general gruesomeness abounding.  It would be a little difficult to persuade somebody that As You Like It was cursed.  Even the dodgiest tradition needs a little something to work with and Macbeth provides it in spades.

On second thoughts possibly a curse isn't enough to scare anyone away.  The lure of money is pretty powerful and has proved to be capable of getting people to risk genuine curses not just ones cobbled together in the fifteenth century to provide an excuse for shoddy stage management and drunken actors.  Still everybody loves tradition and if its a creepy one so much the better.  At this point it would be positively mean to explode the myth.  Which is why the recent incapacitation of half the cast of the Bell Shakespeare Company's production of Macbeth with food poisoning is such good news.  It is particularly good news for whoever is responsible as they can just claim it was the curse.  For the company it is excellent if somewhat stomache churning publicity.  I for one will be going to see it if only for the possibility that all the main actors will be going off like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.  I might not get front row seats though.