Maggie leaned forward, her hands clasped, her eyes brilliantly fixed on his face. She gave him a little series of nods. At the moment, at least, she believed him.

“And she’s as sexy as hell,” he added. “She uses it. Up to the hilt.”

He went on. The witches, he said, must be completely accepted. The play was written in James the First’s time at his request. James the First believed in witches. In their power and their malignancy. “Let us show you,” said Peregrine, “what I mean. Jeremy, can you?”

Blackout, and there were the drawings, needle-sharp in the focused lights.

“You see the first one,” Peregrine said. “That’s what we’ll go up on, my dears. A gallows with its victim, picked clean by the witches. They’ll drop down from it and dance clumsy widdershins around it. Thunder and lightning. Caterwauls. The lot. Only a few seconds and then they’ll leap up and we’ll see them in midair. Blackout. They’ll fall behind the high rostrum onto a pile of mattresses. Gallows away. Pipers. Lighted torches and we’re off.”

Well, he thought, I’ve got them. For the moment. They’re caught. And that’s all one can hope for. He went through the rest of the cast, noting how economically the play was written and how completely the inherent difficulty of holding the interest in a character as seemingly weak as Macbeth was overcome.

“Weak?” asked Dougal Macdougal. “You think him weak, do you?”

“Weak, in respect of this one monstrous thing he feels himself drawn toward doing. He’s a most successful soldier. You may say ‘larger than life.’ He takes the stage, cuts a superb figure. The King has promised he will continue to shower favors upon him. Everything is as rosy as can be. And yet — and yet —”

“His wife?” Dougal suggested. “And the witches!”

“Yes. That’s why I say the witches are enormously important. One has the feeling that they are conjured up by Macbeth’s secret thoughts. There’s not a character in the play that questions their authority. There have been productions, you know, that bring them on at different points, silent but menacing, watching their work.