It is unclear why Macbeth has been singled out. No Scottish kings were harmed in the writing of the play, so there is no obvious reason for them to clamber from their tombs when it is produced. So no obvious reason unless the production is an offensively bad one, in which case the demolition job could surely be left to the critics.
In any case the curse cannot be a commentary on the quality of productions because Macbeth is not the only Shakespeare play to be performed badly.
Some time ago I was at a small London theatre which, since they sometimes do good work, I will leave unnamed.
I had gone to see Henry V and my heart sank to see that it was one of those modern productions which shows soldiers in battle dress on television screens at every possible opportunity.
There were two original touches though. The first was that the Saint Crispin's Day speech was done as a scene between Henry V and his speechwriter, probably the only shaft of light in an otherwise clodhopping piece of political correctness.
The other touch, however, was that at the interval they swapped some of the actors around so that Henry V was played by an actor who had been playing someone else in the first half.
There was a certain logic in making substitutions at halftime, after all, soccer managers often do that. What was less clear was why one should do it without telling the audience, so that those who had not seen the play before would be completely confused as to who was who.
There are other curses too, on diamonds, on places and people, but the one which really concerns me is the statutory holiday curse and the reason for that is that I think I've caught it.
I am not sure whether this particular curse is contagious or infectious. Perhaps I stood too close to a short, female, squat person with a black pointed hat. Get too close and stand on her foot and she will mutter "Curse you" through gritted teeth.
Now everyone has their share of life's misfortunes and I have no sympathy with neurotics who blame them on supernatural causes. It's just bad luck, that's what it is, but when the bad luck is always at the beginning of a statutory weekend, you begin to suspect there is more to it than that.
Take driving through France as an example. A couple of years ago we had a large Mercedes car and we were driving back from southern France when it broke down ... nothing particularly unusual in that. On this occasion it was the suspension that went and, at the same time, one of the tyres went as well, presumably out of some form of trade union sympathy.
"It will be expensive to get this repaired over the weekend," I thought. Actually I was wrong. The right word was "impossible".
On that occasion there were two successive holidays, so we were stuck for four days.
The latest example was when we were staying in a relative's house in New Zealand and the water dried up. The only person who knew how to fix it was my brother-in-law and, inevitably, he had just gone away for the long weekend.
Of course, when he came back it was sorted in minutes, he just turned a few taps, tapped a few stopcocks and up came the water as if he was Moses.
Yes, this sort of thing happens from time to time, but how did it know to happen just after the expert had left for the long holiday weekend?
Now I look at holiday weekends with foreboding. What will go wrong this time? Will it be some awful ailment which only one doctor can cure, the one who has just left for a weekend on the Galapagos?
-John Watson is the editor of the UK weekly online magazine The Shaw Sheet - www.shawsheet.com - where he writes as "Chin Chin"
