THE YIDDISH 'HAMLET'
THE YIDDISH 'HAMLET'[ToC]
I
The little poet sat in the East-side café looking six feet high. Melchitsedek Pinchas—by dint of a five-pound note from Sir Asher Aaronsberg in acknowledgement of the dedication to him of the poet's 'Songs of Zion'—had carried his genius to the great new Jewry across the Atlantic. He had arrived in New York only that very March, and already a crowd of votaries hung upon his lips and paid for all that entered them. Again had the saying been verified that a prophet is nowhere without honour save in his own country. The play that had vainly plucked at the stage-doors of the Yiddish Theatres of Europe had already been accepted by the leading Yiddish theatre of New York. At least there were several Yiddish Theatres, each claiming this supreme position, but the poet felt that the production of his play at Goldwater's Theatre settled the question among them.
'It is the greatest play of the generation,' he told the young socialists and free-thinkers who sat around him this Friday evening imbibing chocolate. 'It will be translated into every tongue.' He had passed with a characteristic bound from satisfaction with the Ghetto triumph into cosmopolitan anticipations. 'See,' he added, 'my initials make M.P.—Master Playwright.'
'Also Mud Pusher,' murmured from the next table Ostrovsky, the socialist leader, who found himself almost deserted for the new lion. 'Who is this uncombed bunco-steerer?'