What people say
Never say "good luck" or the name Macbeth; leave a ghost light burning.Performance · 880 searches a month
Theatre superstitions
Theatre superstitions: never say "good luck" or the name Macbeth; leave a ghost light burning. First recorded in 19th century for "break a leg"; the Macbeth curse from the 1930s, it is about 96 years old — the 37th oldest of the 40 superstitions we have dated. The ghost light has a practical origin that outlived its explanation: a single bulb left on stage stops someone walking into the orchestra pit in the dark.
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
19th century for "break a leg"; the Macbeth curse from the 1930s
That makes it
about 96 years old
Rank by age
37 oldest of 40 dated here
Category
Performance
Searched
880 a month
Both famous theatre superstitions are recent. "Break a leg" appears only in the 1920s, and the ban on saying Macbeth inside a theatre was popularised in the twentieth century, despite being presented as Jacobean.
What is going on
The ghost light has a practical origin that outlived its explanation: a single bulb left on stage stops someone walking into the orchestra pit in the dark.Where it applies. English-language theatre; other traditions have their own unrelated sets.
Other performance superstitions
Recorded around the same time
Theatre superstitions is the 37th oldest of the 40 dated superstitions here. Of those, 6 are younger than a century and 5 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →