An Irishman's Diary

NOT THE LEAST unfortunate aspect of the Leaving Cert English exam mix-up is that it may add further credence to the co-called "Curse of Macbeth". Shakespeare's famously ominous tragedy was, after all, to have featured on the ill-fated paper.

Presumably somebody in the exam hall in Co Louth made the mistake of referring to the play by its name, rather than by one of the approved euphemisms; and then failed to undo the damage by not going outside the room immediately, turning in a circle while brushing his clothes off and saying Macbeththree times, before coming back in.

Hence the fraught scene wherein bewildered students found themselves asking: “Is this paper 2 I see before me?”; and the hasty follow-up scene in which the apparition disappeared back into thin air, leaving the students to exit, stage left, and continue their soliloquies by twitter.

I suppose a mere rescheduling of the exam is a small thing compared with some of the misadventures alleged to be associated with the play, such as that in the very first production, the boy playing Lady Macbeth died of fever backstage, forcing Shakespeare himself to deputise.

Or that in 1672 in Amsterdam, the man playing Macbeth substituted a real knife for a fake one and, along with murdering “sleep”, as the play poetically puts it, dispatched the actor playing Duncan too.

Or that in a 1953 outdoor production in Bermuda, during a ultra-realistic attack on Macbeth’s castle, a gust of wind blew smoke and flames into the audience, which panicked and fled; while Charlton Heston, in the lead role, suffered burns to the groin area because his tights were soaked in kerosene.

There are perfectly sensible explanations why Macbethshould be associated with so many unfortunate incidents. One is the simple law of averages. The play is 400 years old, and is revived far more often than most such works. Furthermore, it has many fight scenes, involving swords and daggers. And then there is the question of visibility. Much of the action takes place in the dark, or on foggy heaths of the kind frequented by witches.

Also, perhaps crucially, it is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and so can be staged cheaply and with minimal preparation. This presumably makes it an attractive option for hard-up theatre companies, which are just the sort of institutions in which corners might be cut with health and safety.

Also, Macbethmust occasionally have been the victim of bad luck, as well as the alleged cause. Surely, for example, the play was an innocent bystander in events in New York during May 1849, where the long-running feud between America's leading actor Edwin Forrest and the great English tragedian William Macready came to a tragic head.

The paranoid Forrest had blamed Macready for hisses from the audience during his [Forrest’s] performance as Macbeth some years before. So when he heard that the Englishman was ending his triumphant American tour by staging the Scottish play in Manhattan, he promptly announced a rival Macbeth for the same night.

Unfortunately some of Forrest's fans, whipped to a jingoistic fervour by the press, attended Macready's performance with the intent of throwing fruit and furniture at him. An all-out riot ensued; the militia was called in; and the net result of the two Macbeths was 34 dead and 50 injured.

Most of the incidents blamed on the play have been on a rather smaller scale. And many, as I say, have logical explanations. Surely, far from it being in any way supernatural, a simple excess of method acting was to blame when in 1948, Diana Wynyard performed Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene with her eyes closed and walked off the stage, falling 15ft.

But people prefer the romantic explanation. So, ever since the idea of the curse was conceived, it has haunted productions like Banquo's ghost. Soon the myth became self-perpetuating. Nobody documents accidents during Romeo and Julietor Hamlet; whereas if an actor scratches himself during Macbeth, it is recoded as yet more proof of the play's reputation.

Thus when, during the first modern-dress production in London in 1928, a large set collapsed, seriously injuring cast members, it had to be the curse at work. Or when, during a 1942 production with John Gielgud, the actors playing two of the witches and King Duncan all died, while the set designer committed suicide, that was the curse too.

And so on, up until a 2001 production in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during which Macduff injured his back, Lady Macbeth hurt her head, Ross broke a toe, and two trees from Birnam Wood toppled over, damaging the set.

That was all supernatural as well.

Now, as the mere inclusion of a question about the play causes a Leaving Cert exam to be cancelled for the first time in decades, it must be a sign that the curse is spreading beyond the theatrical community. And if I had handed out a wrong paper, that’s exactly what I’d be telling the State Examinations Commission.