A number of tragedies have struck companies that have produced Shakespeare's "Macbeth."

•Shakespeare wrote "Macbeth" partially to please his king, James I, who was both fascinated and terrified by witchcraft.

James wrote a treatise on sorcery and devil worship called "Daemonologie," and Shakespeare used many of the themes of "Daemonologie" in the play "Macbeth."

•The show was first performed before the king in 1606. Hal Berredge, the young actor playing Lady Macbeth, collapsed with fever and died in rehearsal, and Shakespeare himself stepped into the role.

King James was so frightened by the witches' curses that he banned the play from production for five years.

•In 1672 in Amsterdam, the actor playing Macbeth substituted a real dagger for the stage prop and killed the actor playing Duncan in front of the audience.

•After decades of no production, the play opened in 1703 on a day when Southern England was struck with one of the worst storms in English history.

The storm was blamed on the play.

•In 1849, two rival productions of the play in New York resulted in riots in which 31 people were trampled to death.

•The play was Abraham Lincoln's favorite, and he read from the assassination scene one week before he himself was killed in 1865.

•In 1934, actor Malcolm Keen was struck mute on stage while playing the role, and his replacement developed a fever and was hospitalized.

•In 1937, a Laurence Olivier production was plagued by a number of accidents, including a 25-pound weight falling close to Olivier, his sword breaking onstage and flying into the lap of a man who died of a heart attack, car accidents involving the director and the actor playing Lady MacDuff, and the theater owner dying of a heart attack at dress rehearsal.

•During John Gielgud's 1942 production, two of the witches and "Duncan" died, and the scene designer committed suicide.

•In a 1953 production starring Charlton Heston, a wind blew torch flames into a fleeing audience and ignited Heston's tights.

•A 1971 production battled through seven robberies and two fires.