Saying Macbeth in a theater
Saying Macbeth in a theater is the stage's best-known taboo, and many actors use a nickname for the play instead. It belongs to one of the oldest human habits: steering around a word as if the word itself could do harm.
What it may mean
Plenty of actors who would happily perform Macbeth will not say its title in the dressing room. The fear is attached to the word, not the play, and that puts it in very old company. English and Scottish fishermen, by one old account, thought it unlucky to mention any four-footed animal at sea; in Shetland it was unlucky to speak of the sea at all, and in India to name a snake or a tiger after dark. People everywhere have tried to keep danger away by not naming it. Most of us still do it in small ways: the illness referred to as "it," the deadline nobody mentions, the money worry that becomes "things being a bit tight." A nickname can soften fear, and it can also keep a subject from ever being talked about plainly.
Depending on how you saw it
Saying it while rehearsing the play itself
When a company is putting on Macbeth, actors have to say the name in the script, and many treat that as allowed while still avoiding it backstage. A rule bends where the work demands it. Which of your own rules makes an exception that its fans rarely mention?
Hearing a visitor say it in the lobby
The taboo is mainly kept by the people who work in a theater, so a visitor who says the title in the lobby often gets a startled look from an usher before anyone thinks to explain. Rules feel natural to insiders. Who first explained one of your workplace's unwritten rules to you, and how kindly did they do it?
After a terrible dress rehearsal
"Bad rehearsal, good performance" is an old theater saying, recorded in 1903 among actors' beliefs. It lets a frightened cast go on stage anyway. Which rough start ended better than you expected?
Why it happens in nature
Theaters hold real hazards, from heavy scenery and trapdoors to dim backstage light and stage combat, and crews keep many habits that help everyone stay alert. One explanation offered for Macbeth's bad name is that struggling companies staged it as a reliable crowd-pleaser, so it was often the last play before a theater closed.
What folk beliefs say
Italy
Italians, a 1903 collection of theater superstitions says, believed that anything connected with a tragedy carries ill fortune.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 1 (1903), vol. 1, p. 559. View the page
To reflect on
Which word or subject do you steer around, and what would change if you named it plainly?