Since today is “Black Friday,” and since I’ve been looking at Macbeth a lot lately (in preparation for our next Shakespeare Allowed! reading in Nashville), I thought I would share one of my favorite Shakespeare oriented comedy videos: a hilarious sequence from the Rowan Atkinson/Richard Curtis series, Blackadder. In this clip, Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder has some fun with some pompous actors concerning the superstition over speaking the name of “the Scottish play.”
As funny as the clip is, I personally know many actors who believe in the old superstition 100%. (I do not, but I’m not a particularly superstitious person.) Interestingly enough, I never even learned of the tradition until I was in my mid-20s, even though I had done theater for several years before that. When I was told of it, I honestly thought they were pulling my leg, and it wasn’t until I began to poke fun at the idea that I found that they were deadly serious. So, these days, out of respect for my friends, I don’t criticize the superstition, even though I don’t believe it myself.
Anyway, enjoy the clip below (it’s one I share on this blog a couple years ago), and enjoy the bonus clip I’m posting, of a Blackadder episode that poked a little fun at Samuel Johnson, who in addition to his famous dictionary, was also a noted Shakespeare scholar.
Finally, this “summary” of Macbeth showed up on my Threads feed a few days ago, and it cracked me up.
Willy Wigglestick 