He looked at his day-to-day calendar. A red ring neatly encircled April 23. Shakespeare’s birthday. Opening night. Less than a week left, he thought.

He was not a pious man, but he caught himself wondering for the moment about the protective comfort of a phylactery and wishing he could experience it.

The days before the opening night seemed to hurry and to darken. There were no disasters and no untoward happenings, only a rushing immediacy. The actors arrived early for rehearsals. Some who were not called came to the last of the piecemeal sessions and watched closely and with a painful intensity.

The first of the dress rehearsals, really a technical rehearsal, lasted all day with constant stoppages for lights and effects. The management had a meal sent in. It was set up in the rehearsal room: soup, cold meat, potatoes in their skins, salad, coffee. Some members of the cast helped themselves when they had an opportunity. Others, Maggie for one, had nothing.

The props for the banquet were all there: a boar’s head with a lemon in its jaws and glass eyes. Plastic chickens. A soup tureen that would exude steam when a servingman removed the lid. Peregrine looked under the covers but the contents were all right: glued down. Loose: wine jugs; goblets; a huge candelabrum in the center of the table.

The pauses for lights were continual. Dialogue. Stop. “Catch them going up. Refocus it. Is it fixed? This mustn’t happen again.”

The witches each had a tiny blue torch concealed in their clothes. They switched these on when Macbeth spoken to them. They had to be firmly sewn and accurately pointed at their faces.

Plain sailing for a bit but still the feeling of pressure and anxiety. But that, after all, was normal. The actors played “within themselves.” Or almost. They got an interrupted run. The tension was extreme. The theatre was full of marvelous but ominous sounds. The air was thick with menace.

The arrival at Macbeth’s castle in the evening was the last seen of daylight for a long time. Exquisite lighting: a mellow and tranquil scene. Banquo’s beautiful voice saying “the air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.” The sudden change when the doors rolled back and the piper skirled wildly and Lady Macbeth drew the King into the castle.

From now on it is night, for dawn, after the murder, was delayed and hardly declared itself, and before the murder of Banquo it is dusk: “The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day,” says the watchful assassin.

Banquo is murdered.

After the banquet the Macbeths are alone together, the last time the audience sees them so, and the night is “almost at odds with morning, which is which.” Otherwise, torchlight, lamplight, witchlight right on until the English scene, out-of-doors and sunny with a good King on the throne.

When Macbeth reappears he is aged, disheveled, half-demented, deserted by all but a few who cannot escape. Dougal Macdougal would be wonderful. He played these last abysmal scenes now well under their final pitch, but with every wayward change indicated. He was a wounded animal with a snarl or two left in him. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow …” The speech tolled its way to the end like a death knell.

Macduff and Malcolm, the lairds and their troops arrive. Now, at last, Macbeth and Macduff meet. The challenge. The fight. The exit and the scream cut short.

The brief scene in which Old Siward speaks the final conventional merciless word on his son’s death, and then Macduff enters downstage, and behind him Seyton, with Macbeth’s head on his claidheamh-mor.

Malcolm, up on the stairway among his soldiers, is caught by the setting sun. They turn their heads and see The Head. And finally:

“Hail, King of Scotland!” shout the soldiers.

“Curtain,” Peregrine said. “But don’t bring it down. Hold it. Thank you. Lights. I think they’re a little too juicy at the end. Too pink. Can you give us something a bit less obvious? Straw, perhaps. It’s too much ‘Exit into sunset.’ You know? Right. Settle down, everybody. Bring some chairs on. I won’t keep the actors very long. Settle down.”

They settled.

He went through the play. “Witches, all raise your arms when you jump.

“Details. Nothing of great importance except on the Banquo’s ghost exit. You were too close to Lennox. Your cloak moved in the draft.”

“Can they leave a wider gap?”

“I can,” said Lennox. “Sorry.”

“Right. Any more questions?” Predictably, Banquo. His scene with Fleance and Macbeth. The lighting. “It feels false. I have to move into it.”

“Come on a bit farther on your entrance. Nothing to stop you, is there?”

“It feels false.”

“It doesn’t give that impression,” said Peregrine very firmly. “Any other questions?”

William piped up. “When I’m stabbed,” he said. “I kind of hold the wound and then collapse. Could the murderer catch me before I fall?”

“Certainly,” said Peregrine. “He’s meant to.”

“Sorry,” said the murderer. “I missed it. I was too late.”

They plowed on. Attention to details. Getting everything right, down to the smallest move, the fractional pause. Changes of pace building toward a line of climax. Peregrine spent three quarters of an hour over the cauldron scene. The entire cast were required to whisper the repeated rhythmic chant as in a round.

At last they moved on. There were no more questions. Peregrine thanked them. “Same time tomorrow,” he said, “and I hope no stops. You’ve been very patient. Bless you all. Good-night.”

But again there were stops, next day. A number of technical hitches cropped up during the final dress rehearsal, mostly to do with the lights. They were all cleared up. Peregrine had said to the cast: “Keep something in the larder. Don’t reach the absolute tops. Play within yourselves. Conserve your energy. Save the consummate thing for the performance. We know you can do it, my dears. Don’t exhaust yourselves.”

They obeyed him but there were one or two horrors.

Lennox missed an entrance and arrived looking as if the Devil himself was after him.

Duncan lost his lines, had to be prompted, and was slow to recover. Nina Gaythorne dried completely and looked terror-stricken. William went straight on with his own lines: “And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?” and she answered like an automaton.

“It was a dose of stage fright,” she said when they came off. “I didn’t know where I was or what I said. Oh, this play. This play.”

“Never mind, Miss Gaythorne,” said William, taking her hand. “It won’t happen again. I’ll be with you.”

“That’s something,” she said, half-laughing and half-crying.

At the end they rehearsed the curtain calls. The “dead” characters on the O.P. side and the live ones on the Prompt. Then the Macbeths alone, and finally the man himself. Alone.

Peregrine took his notes and thanked his cast. “Change but don’t go,” he said.

“ ‘Bad dress. Good show.’ ” quoted the stage director cheerfully. “Are we getting them down tomorrow?”

He put this to the company.

“If we get it rotten-perfect now, you can sleep in tomorrow morning. It’s just a matter of working straight on from cue to cue with nothing between. All right? Any objections? Banquo?”

“I?” said Banquo, who had been ready to make one. “Objections? Oh no. No.”

They finished at five of two in the morning. The management had provided beer, whiskey, and sherry. Some of them left without taking anything. William was dispatched in a taxi with Angus and Menteith, who lived more or less in the same direction. Maggie slipped away as soon as her sleepwalking scene was over and she had seen Peregrine. Fleance went after the murder, Banquo, after the cauldron scene, and Duncan, on his arrival at the castle. There were not many holdups. A slight rearrangement of the company fights at the end. Macbeth and Macduff went like clockwork.