Time yet for a hundred indecisions

they’re all following this jesus nonsense instead of the old roman religion

they only know what it’s like under the empire and not the glory of the res publica

all of them want to follow weird greek fashions like writing poetry and growing beards instead of following the mos maiorum and wearing togas

they’re all so used to this cushy “pax romana” nonsense that none of them want to conquer anything like their ancestors did, and they probably don’t even remember carthage

they have no idea what it was like living before the common era

Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.

The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.

The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler - or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.

But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:

Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!

Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!

Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!

Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).

so, the standard rule is that if you say ‘Macbeth’ or quote from it while you are in a theatre which is not performing it, you and your fellows will receive bad luck, which, according to some, can be counteracted by performing one of several rituals. My question: ‘is the Macbeth curse activated in the following circumstances?’ : 

Someone saying it to you over a phone while you stand in a theatre. 

Receiving it as a text or social media message. 

Listening to a recording of a person saying it.

Quoting or naming Macbeth in sign language. 

A parrot quoting or naming Macbeth with no understanding of its significance or meaning (is that ‘speech’ and therefore ‘quoting’, or just mimicked noises?)

The first thing we have to decide is precisely how the magic works; it could be the intent and awareness behind the utterance, or the simple act of speaking, or the syllables themselves.

If it’s the sound itself, then the parrot can cast the curse, as could the recording and the person on the other end of the phone, but the sign language and the social media posts would be inert. If it’s working on sound alone like this, then translated quotes from the play would not cast the curse, nor would paraphrases or misquotes, but strings of text that are contained within the text of the play and spoken (or played) out of context or without an awareness of the phrase in the play would also cast the curse. Every instance of “who comes here?” and “God save the king” and “good morrow, noble sir” and “knock knock” would cast it. So, since Hamlet and knock knock jokes do not carry a similar curse, we can rule out the sound only method, at least for quotes.

If the magic works on the speaker’s awareness of the context of the utterance, then the parrot and recording can’t cast it, but the sign language should be able to. The phone might work, if the caller is aware that their voice is being transmitted into a theatre. The person in the theatre should most likely be able cast the curse by posting to social media or sending a text message. Reading a post social media post might work, depending on the OP’s awareness that a potential reader might be in a theatre. Same with reading text messages. However, by this method one could theoretically think “Macbeth” hard enough to cast the curse without actually saying anything, and a text message or social media post could cause one to do so. (If you’ve read American Gods, there’s a bit where a character thinks “snow” hard enough to make it actually snow. If the Macbeth curse works on thinking “Macbeth” hard enough to fit that thought to speech, then it could theoretically work without any speech involved at all, at least for certain magically inclined persons).

If it’s the act of speaking – the act of tying the thoughts to the words – then, like the awareness/intent method, the parrot and the recording do nothing while the sign language and text in translation are effective. Receiving it as a text message or viewing it on social media would likely do nothing, the sender/OP not tying the thought to the world while being in a theatre, but if you sent or posted the text from the theatre it would depend on how your thought-to-text process and how closely that mimics speech. Small tangent: when I type, I think a thought and as I fit the words to the thought those words spill out my fingers in almost exactly the same way spoken words spill off my tongue, so I’d consider my own typing to be an “utterance” and capable of casting a speech-based curse like this. But when I write by hand or use the touchscreen keyboard on my phone, it’s not as fluent and not as similar to speech, so I could cast the curse by typing on a laptop, but not by writing on paper or sending a text message from my phone. Different people would be able to cast it using different methods. The phone is again a bit trickier, and might work if the caller knows you’re in a theatre.

On to what counts as a theatre for the purposes of the curse. There would have to be something magically different about a space where plays are performed that would affect magic, sort of how how churches are consecrated and assorted gooblies can’t enter them, or how vampires can’t cross thresholds of homes without being invited. Conceptual lines are drawn between or around spaces to mark them out for certain purposes, and magic does different things within different space. Like how temperature influences what water can do (eg, be solid or liquid), the presence of a threshold line or inside-a-theatre-ness would influence what magic can do.

A non-theatre space being temporarily used as a theatre would pick up a sort of temporary consecration (I don’t think I have a secular term for the concept, so “consecrate” will have to do) that would make the curse work when it is determined that it shall be used for a production, or when the rehearsals or other production-related activity starts there, and then afterwards the consecration would dissipate as the production infrastructure is removed and the space is used for other activities. Or at least, I’m assuming it would. It is possible that the threatre-ness would linger, at least for a time.

What about buildings that used to be theatres and are now used for other purposes? Does the curse work in them? And how about land that used to have a theatre built on it? How does a space become a theatre, for curse purposes, anyway?

I would assume that when a space is intended to be used for productions of plays, it picks up a bit of theateryness from that intention, more depending on how distinctly the space is delineated (so buildings get the most, since they’re delineated by solid walls and roof, and meadows and naturalistic parks get the least, since they don’t have solid lines), and then rehearsing and performing and watching plays in that space creates more theateryness, until there’s enough for it to heavily influence magic. Then, after a building is torn down or abandoned or repurposed or a production moves on from a temporary the space, theateryness would begin to dissipate, and it could be thoroughly gone within days (for a single short-lived production in a poorly delineated space) or it could take centuries (for a building which was a popular theatre and busy theatre for ages).