It is often believed by thespians that it is bad luck to say the name “Macbeth” within the theater that the play is being performed. This belief stems back to 1606 when a group of witches objected to William Shakespeare using real incantations within his work. As such, these witches claimed to have placed a curse upon the play, in perpetuity. The superstitious tradition caught on as the initial showing of Macbeth in private before King James I at Hampton Court in London, England sometime between August and December of 1606 was laiden with unfortunate errors and mishaps, continuing non-stop, even when performed for the public for the first time at the Globe Theater in London, England in 1611
Tag: William Shakespeare
The Vocabulary of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare had a vocabulary of approximately 65,000 words although he only utilized 31,534 of those words within his work. To provide a frame of reference, the average English speaking person of the modern day knows 10,000 – 20,000 words despite having an education many orders of magnitude more advanced than what Shakespeare was ever introduced to half a millennia ago