I was over at Christopher Fowler’s blog (which is right here), where he says he’s thinking of another Bryant & May mystery set in a theatre (read that entry right here). He raises the dodgy etymological origin of the phrase “Break a Leg” as being due to a poor practical joke played by the Duke of York upon Samuel Foote, the Manager of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket (then called the Little Theatre).
“Bollocks!” cried I, and commented in typical lengthy style (material reproduced below). Read this, read the post on his site, comment here, comment there,* whatever.
The tradition of the avoidance of the phrase “good luck” to actors is due to not wishing to tempt the Gods of Theatre to see you as usurping their power, owing to everything in the theatre being so tenuous at the best of times. The dance tradition is to write Merde! on someone’s make-up mirror (ballet being entirely a French art, at least in communication of technique).
The reason for the use of the phrase “break a leg” that one understood, however, was entirely due to the tall, narrow curtains at the sides of the stage being called ‘legs’ due to their trouser-like shape. In the time of Shakespeare the bit players would be chosen on the night from local performers who had pre-memorised those lines and shown-up prior to the show and stood waiting in the wings to be selected to ‘break’ or ‘pass between’ the side-curtains and act on stage.
That is, of course, only one possible answer to the whole messy question. It could be entirely wrong, just as it could be entirely correct.
Now if you want some serious eyebrow raising time, attempt to sort out the origin of the term for the actors’ waiting area: “the green room”. I’ve heard about four major versions of that one: the grass carpets, or ‘greens’ were stored there when un-used; the colour of the sulphur of the footlights made the actors make-up look odd, but when viewed in a room with green walls they were able to check the stage results before going out there; green was, at some time, the least expensive to purchase; it was the best colour of paint to cover stains; etc. No one knows this one.
* I was going to make a play on the famous poem about the Scarlet Pimpernel, but decided against it. There are things I leave out of this babble, you know. Some, anyway. [go back]
Ian Alexander Martin [
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Why Do Actors Say This?
Because they can.