A day after Will Smith publicly slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, some on Twitter have a theory about what caused the comedian’s misfortune: he said “Macbeth.”
According to an old superstition, one must never utter the name of the Shakespeare character in a theatre, except to perform or rehearse a line from the play. Instead, the monarch must be referred to as “the Scottish king” or “the Scottish lord,” and the work itself as “the Scottish play.” Otherwise, one invites disaster.
