Macbeth's Witch

Onstage

I had just turned twenty, hired as an instructor in English after graduating cum laude with a major in English and Comparative Literature from the university. I wasn't bad-looking at all. In fact, I was just beginning to bloom.

So, how did I end up with the role?

I guess because I was the most junior of the staff.

I had to be the sacrificial lamb who'd play one of the witches in the English Department's television presentation of a scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth. (Aside: the two other witches were played by instructors who had come on board a year or two before.) 

I couldn't and didn't complain even when I knew that onstage, I'd have to hunch over, wearing a long robe-like clothing and made up with wrinkled skin, pointy nose and stringy hair.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

But I was set. 

The scene was foggy and dark, predominantly empty except for a cauldron center stage.

Crook in hand, we the Weird Sisters proceeded to stir the stockpot into which we had tossed a number of pretend gross items to concoct our spell. 

Then my lines. I first ran the tip of my tongue along my teeth and spoke with a quivering voice in heavy stresses, exuding a sense of foreboding.

Double, double toil and trouble

Fire burn and caldron bubble. 

I was in character, malevolent and unearthly.

The studio echoed with our dark words. On cue, I looked up once at the camera and gave a glare that could freeze vodka and cackled, Hihihi!

That was my Shakespearian moment.

Stereotypically withered. Wild. A hag with skinny lips and choppy fingers that looked not like th' inhabitants o' th' Earth.

I kinda relished the role after the fact. A few spiders and a creepy bat and some spider webs draped here and there was fine with me. 

Such a good job, was the Department Chair's pronouncement in the end.

I learned later in a staff meeting that the scene from Hamlet where mad Ophelia drowned was in the offing for the next telecast. 

Lord, please soon grant me tenure so this role may pass over me.