Macbeth Curse?

                  Apparently there is a curse on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare. There are two superstition that float around Macbeth. The first is it's bad luck to even say "Macbeth" unless you're rehearsing or performing the play. Instead you should call it “the Scottish play” or “Mackers” or perhaps “the Scottish business” or “the Glamis comedy.” Some say that the rule only applies if you're in a theather, so that it makes it ok to say it in a classroom setting. The second superstition is that the play itself brings bad luck to the cast and crew. The supposed story for this curse is that because there are fake witches chanting in the play real witches got mad and set a curse on the play, condemning it for all time. If ledgends are true the bad fortune with the production of Macbeth have started from the very first production.

• On the first production, on August 7, 1606, the boy playing lady Macbeth got very sick and died backstage. The story is that Shakespeare himself had to take his spot.
• In 1672 in Amsterdam the actor playing Macbeth used a real dagger instead of a fake one and killed the actor playing Duncan right in front of the audience.
• In  1703 on opening day of London they were hit with one of the most violent storms in history.
•   In 1775, Sarah Siddons was nearly attacked by an angry audience. In 1926, Sybil Thorndike was almost strangled by a fellow actor. And in 1948, Diana Wynyard decided to play the sleepwalking scene with her eyes closed and sleepwalked right off the stage, falling 15 feet. After her fall she continued her performance.
• On April 9, 1865 Abraham Lincoln was reading a section of the play to his friends. A week later is when his assassination.
• A more recent performance gone wrong was in 2001, a production by the Cambridge Shakespeare Company, Macduff injured his back, Lady Macbeth bumped her head, Ross broke a toe, and two cedar trees from Birnam Wood topped over, destroying the set.

Do you think the curse is real or is it simply coincidence?






Source: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2267/whats-the-story-on-the-curse-of-em-macbeth-em