‘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.

‘They pull Macbeth along the path to that one definitive action. And then, having killed the King, he’s left – a murderer. For ever. Unable to change. His morbid imagination takes charge. The only thing he can think of is to kill again. And again. Notice the imagery. The play closes in on him. And on us. Everything thickens. His clothes are too big, too heavy. He’s a man in a nightmare.

‘There’s the break, the breather for the leading actor that comes in all the tragedies. We see Macbeth once again with the witches and then comes the English scene with the boy Malcolm taking his oddly contorted way of finding out if Macduff is to be trusted, his subsequent advance into Scotland, the scene of Lady Macbeth speaking of horrors with the strange, dead voice of the sleepwalker.

‘And then we see him again; greatly changed; aged, desperate, unkempt; his cumbersome royal robes in disarray, attended still by Seyton who has grown in size. And so to the end.’

He waited for a moment. Nobody spoke.

‘I would like,’ said Peregrine, ‘before we block the opening scenes to say a brief word about the secondary parts. It’s the fashion to say they’re uninteresting. I don’t agree. About Lennox, in particular. He’s likeable, down to earth, quick-witted but slow to make the final break. There’s evidence in the imperfect script of some doubt about who says what. We will make Lennox the messenger to Lady Macduff. When next we see him he’s marching with Malcolm. His scene with an unnamed thane (we’ll give the lines to Ross) when their suspicion of Macbeth, their nosing out of each other’s attitudes, develops into a tacit understanding, is “modern” in treatment, almost black comedy in tone.’

‘And the Seyton?’ asked a voice from the rear. A very deep voice.

‘Ah, Seyton. There again, obviously, he’s “Sirrah”, the unnamed servant who accompanies Macbeth like a shadow, who carries his great claidheamh-mor, who joins the two murderers and later in the play emerges with a name – Seyton. He has hardly any lines but he’s ominous. A big, silent, ever-present, amoral fellow who only leaves his master at the very end. We’re casting Gaston Sears for the part. My Sears, as you all know, in addition to being an actor is an authority on medieval weapons and is already working for us in that capacity.’ There was an awkward silence followed by an acquiescent murmur.

The saturnine person, sitting alone, cleared his throat, folded his arms and spoke. ‘I shall carry,’ he announced, basso-profundo, ‘a claidheamh-mor.’