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    ACT I
    The castle had been abandoned by almost all of its inhabitants. Its population had decided, little point in staying only to be slaughtered by the English army, and so they crept out by ones and twos throughout the night, and they made what peace they could with the enemy. Some even begged to join Malcolm’s troop, so as to be on the winning side in the morrow’s inevitable English victory. When Macbeth awoke, with only Seyton in attendance, he found his halls deserted, his battlements unguarded. “Let them fly!” he blustered, striding up the stone stairs to survey
the scene from the top of his tallest tower. “I bear a charméd life. I need them not!”
    He looked down upon the investing force: a mass of humanity stretching as far as the eye could see. They had thrown down the boughs and branches that they had taken from Birnam Wood, and now stood in serried ranks, their armor and their weapons glittering in the morning sunlight.
    â€œIt looks bad sir,” said Seyton, in a miserable voice.
    â€œNonsense!” boomed Macbeth. “We cannot be defeated.”
    â€œBut the charm, sir,” said Seyton, cringing a little as if expecting Macbeth to strike him in his furious frustration. “Has it not tricked you? It said you would never vanquished be, till Great Birnam Wood should come to high Dunsinane hill.”
    â€œIndeed it did ,” said Macbeth, with enormous self-satisfaction.
    â€œAnd we need but look, sir!” said Seyton, indicating the host that lay spread before them. “Malcolm’s army has brought Birnam Wood hither!”
    â€œSeyton, Seyton, Seyton,” said Macbeth, genially. He clasped his servant about the shoulders and gave the top of his head a little rub with the knuckles of his right hand. “You’ve got to pay more attention . The one crucial thing about magical prophecies is that they are enormously and pedantically precise . So, what—Malcolm’s army cut down a few boughs and carried them along to Dunsinane! That’s hardly the same thing as the forest moving! Ask yourself this … if you were a mapmaker—”
    â€œMapmaker,” repeated Seyton, nodding uncertainly.
    â€œâ€”yes, if you were making a map —for the sake of argument, you know—and you were making a map of Scotland, where would you put Birnam Wood? Over there on the distant hill”—he pointed to the horizon where the blue-green forest still lay like a cloud against the horizon—“the location of the trunks and roots and most of the foliage ? Or here at Dunsinane, where a few thousand branches and leaves have been carried?”

    â€œUm,” said Seyton, tentatively offering his answer like a schoolchild before a stern schoolmaster, “the first one?”
    â€œExactly! Birnam Wood is still on the hill . The prophecy has not been fulfilled. I am, accordingly, un worried.”
    From below came the sound of repeated thuds. Malcolm’s sappers, in the unusual position of being able to work without resistance from castle defenders, were knocking down the main gate with a large battering ram. “Right,” said Macbeth. “Better put on some armor. Not that I need it. More for the show of it than anything.”
    With a great crash the gate gave way.
    By the time he got downstairs, armored and besworded, Macbeth’s main courtyard was filled with several hundred English soldiers. At the front of this fierce crowd were Macduff and young Siward. Siward made a rush at Macbeth, hurrying up the stone stairway to engage the Scottish king. Macbeth chopped his head off with a single stroke of his sword.
    The crowd in the courtyard hissed their disapproval.
    Rather relishing the theatricality of it, Macbeth cried out: “Begone, Macduff! You cannot kill me!”
    The general hissing turned into a general laughing.
    â€œDo you boast so?” said Macduff, cockily, throwing his