The audience of Ghettoites couldn’t help groaning. What an awful feast was this! When only a moment before they had been serving duck! The gardener boy, skipping wildly, holding his hat on, was even worse.

3rd WITCH: Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew!

Then they all joined hands and, like normal boys, danced around the boiling, bubbling broth.

TOGETHER: Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

The boy with the tin shook it mightily. The thunder cracked. Lightning flickered. Cellophane strips under the pot writhed like snakes, like bright tongues of flame.

Into this scene came King Macbeth, looking lost. He had his crown on his head and wore his short kilt. But his shoulders, under the weight of his armor, were drooping. He demanded that the hags make predictions. Immediately they told him what to be afraid of, and what not to fear. Good news! Macbeth could never be beaten until the forest of Birnam—an absolute impossibility—marched up Dunsinane Hill.

But the tyrant was not satisfied. “Yet my heart throbs to know one thing,” he declared.

Tell me, if your art
Can tell so much. Shall Banquo’s issue ever
Reign in this kingdom?

The weird sisters laughed and laughed, as if he’d told a joke. They pointed to the kettle, which just sat there, boiling over. Suddenly a child, a boy, hardly more than a toddler, climbed out of the caldron and began to wander around. A second child, no older than the first, popped up in his place. And then a third one appeared. Mann Lifshits knew how to make his eyes bug from their sockets. He did this now, and staggered backward as well.

A fourth! Start, eyes!
What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Another yet! A seventh!

Friends, remember that to give birth in the Ghetto was strictly forbidden. No wonder the appearance of so many little ones, each with his folded white napkin, his tiny suspenders, created a sensation. How happy they seemed! How fat their little legs were! They kept coming out of the kettle as if they were woven from the wisps of steam.

“Come, chickee!” the spectators cried. They were cooing and cooing. Even Macbeth seemed affected. He held his arms out to the tots. But they ran by him to where the ghost of Usher Flicker, on piano wires, was dropping out of the sky. Banquo hovered a moment, then set on each upturned head a paper crown, gold-colored, that tied with elastic under the chin. Thus Macbeth learned the answer to his question. He stared, barren, empty-handed, at the little kings. How they romped! They were having a wonderful party.

“Ha! Ha!”

It wasn’t the witches laughing. It wasn’t Madame Trumpelman. This time it was the Elder himself. It was frightening to see how his lips came away from his gums. “I’m not upset! Don’t look so scared, Jews! Look, I’m smiling. All this is old-hat. The Lipskyites, the left-wingers, mock me the way midgets taunt a giant! They want to put me in a cage! Ha! Ha! So people can laugh! But it takes more than a play to frighten me!”