FREE ESSAY ON THE CRUCIBLE

THE CRUCIBLE

ARTHUR MILLER: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
In Salem, Massachusetts, a dozen teen-age girls and a black slave woman are caught
dancing in the woods around a bubbling cauldron. Today, you wouldn't even use the word
caught. You might think these girls were strange, but you'd hardly call the cops on them.
But it's 1692, and Salem isn't just an ordinary small town; it's a religious community of
the strictest kind. The people and their laws are as harsh as the Massachusetts winter.
When two of the girls pass out from fright and can't be revived, the others find
themselves in serious trouble. Women who dance with the Devil are witches; and witches,
when they are caught, are hanged. To get themselves out of their predicament, the girls
try to spread the blame around. But the blame-spreading gets out of hand, and before long
the whole town is in a panic, everyone accusing everyone else of witchcraft. Nineteen
people will be hanged before the madness is stopped.
Well, you say, people were superstitious then. Nothing like that could happen today.
Maybe so, but in the early 1950s, at the time The Crucible was written, a similar kind of
hunt was taking place, not for witches, but for Communists. Today it bears the
harmless-sounding name of the McCarthy Hearings on Un-American Activities, but for the
people who got caught up in it--some of them our parents and grandparents--this
witch-hunt was anything but harmless. in fact, to the playwright Arthur Miller, the
McCarthy Hearings bore an alarming resemblance to the trials in Salem in 1692. The
Crucible was his way of trying to keep history from repeating itself.
One of the most popular TV shows in 1953 was I Led Three Lives. It always began the same
way: A man's face appears on the screen. His expression is taut with anxiety. The
narrator says something like, This is the fantastically true story of Herbert A.
Philbrick, who for nine frightening years did lead three lives--average citizen, member
of the Communist Party, and counterspy for the FBI. For obvious reasons, the names, dates
and places have been changed, but the story is based on fact. The show was scary and
exciting, but it always left you worried, because Philbrick's job never seemed to be
done. Communist spies were everywhere, and one man could do only so much against so
many.
There was a lot of talk in those days about the Red Menace. Red is the color of the
Russian flag, and all Russians are Communists. So to say Better dead than red meant that
you'd kill yourself before you let the Communists take over. The slogan was repeated over
and over throughout America. My father said it; my teachers said it; I'm sure I said it
myself, even though I was just five years old at the time.
And in fact there were good reasons to be worried about the Russians. They had the atomic
bomb, as we did. But a lot of people said they got the bomb by using spies, and that
really made us worry. It was charged that secret agents, working under cover, had stolen
our secrets and given them to the Enemy. Even worse, these spies supposedly were hardly
ever Russians themselves, but often American citizens, as normal as you or me, the kind
of people you see every day on the street and hardly even notice. Blacks are identifiable
by their skin color, foreigners speak with an unusual accent. But a Communist could be
anybody. It sort of makes a Communist sound like the bogey-man, doesn't it? Well, to many
people in 1953, a Communist was just as scary as the bogey-man, and a lot more real.
Soon after it was discovered that the Russians had the bomb, the U.S. Congress started
investigations into so-called Un-American Activities, and one of the men they put in
charge was Joseph R. McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin. McCarthy claimed America was in
great danger from a Communist conspiracy to take over the world. And, as if he were a
surgeon hacking away tumors in a body riddled with cancer, he tried to root out every
trace of Communism he could find. It soon became clear that very few people were
completely free of any connection with Communism. To find out why, we have to go back in
time a little bit.
Arthur Miller had just turned 14 when His family's savings were wiped out by the stock
market crash of October, 1929. Almost literally overnight, the lives of many of his
friends changed from reasonable comfort to poverty. Over the next 12 years--the time of
the Great Depression, as it is called--Arthur Miller came to know and work with people
who had joined the Communist Party. These people weren't spies, they simply were
desperate, and they saw Communism as a way out of a desperate situation. And although
Communism worried a few people in the 1930s, most were too busy with their own problems
to give it much thought. Besides, Soviet Russia was not yet an enemy of the United
States. In fact, Russian and American soldiers later fought side by side against the
Germans at the end of World War II. It wasn't until after the war, when--as so often
happens--the victor's turned against each other, that Communism began to be considered a
very serious threat.
By the late 1940s when the Congressional hearings first began, there were quite a few
people who had flirted with Communism at some time or other, although most had renounced
it long before. But even if you had no Communism in your own past, you could easily be in
the same position as Arthur Miller--you knew someone who did. That was more than enough
to get you in trouble with Senator McCarthy and similar investigators.
Imagine what it was like being called in to testify. McCarthy or his aides might say, Are
you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party? No. Do you know anyone
who is or was a Communist? No. McCarthy holds up some cards. We have the names of people
who have already confessed. Your name came up in connection with their testimony. Why do
you suppose that is? You say you don't know, but you can tell that no one believes you.
Maybe you're not so innocent after all, you think. Maybe you've been sucked into the
conspiracy without realizing it. Have you signed anything, donated any money, said
anything to anybody that might sound suspicious?
Once you start thinking like this, it's almost impossible to stop. You begin to feel
guilty either way: even if you don't have any Communist connections, you've done nothing
to stop the spread of this evil; You may have even helped the enemy by being stupid or
naive. You did it, it's your fault, their questions seem to say. And they won't let you
go until you make up for it in some way. So you tell them about your friend who's never
home on Tuesday nights, or your mother's uncle who used to quote Communist slogans all
the time, or anyone you know who's been acting a little odd the last few weeks. You name
names, and they let you go.
And afterward no one wants anything to do with you. You were called in to testify, there
had to be a reason. You must be a Communist, or at least have been working for them. You
lose your friends, your job, sometimes even your family. You become an outcast. Your life
is ruined.
This was the fate of many innocent people. Those who were spared either joined in the
witch-hunt or kept silent for fear the same thing would happen to them. A lot of the
victim never recovered, even long after the rest of the country lost interest and Joe
McCarthy had been discredited. By 1957 it was pretty much over, and America could look
back with a sad smile, wondering how anyone could have been so foolish.
But in 1953 it was no joke. Arthur Miller already knew about the Salem witch trials from
his college days at the University of Michigan (1934-38). In The Theater Essays of Arthur
Miller he describes how The Crucible took shape in his mind:... when the McCarthy era
came along, he says, I remembered these stories and I used to tell them to people when it
[the investigation] started. I used to say, you know, McCarthy is actually saying certain
lines that I recall the witch-hunters saying in Salem. So I started to go back, not with
the idea of writing a play, but to refresh my own mind because it was getting eerie.
One day, while he was reading some documents in the Salem museum, some tourists came in
and wanted to see the pins. There was no need to ask, What pins? During the trials in
1692, the so-called witches often sent out their spirits to stick pins into the flesh of
the girls who were accusing them. Now, as Arthur Miller watched, the tourists pass the
books, the exhibits, and no hint of danger reaches them from the quaint relics. I have a
desire to tell them the significance of those relics. It is the desire to write.
The significance of those relics was, in part, that the same thing that happened in 1692
was happening all over again. It was not only the rise of 'McCarthyism' that moved me, he
writes, but something which seemed much more weird and mysterious. It was the fact that a
political, objective, knowledgeable campaign from the far Right [Communists were said to
be on the far left] was capable of creating not only a terror, but a new subjective
reality... and that such manifestly ridiculous men [as Senator Joe McCarthy] should be
capable of paralyzing thought itself.... it was as though the whole country had been born
anew, without a memory.... Astounded, I watched men pass me by without a nod whom I had
known rather well for years.... And so Arthur Miller began to write The Crucible.
A few years before, Arthur Miller had become famous. His second play, Death of a
Salesman, had won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize and a host of other awards. By the time he was
37, in 1952, he was a respected writer of established reputation, and people were looking
forward to his next play. What he had to say was bound to be important.
There's a saying that a prophet is honored everywhere except in his own country. This
could certainly be said of the author of The Crucible when it first opened on Broadway on
January 22, 1953. No one missed the parallels between 1692 Salem and 1953 America. But,
many said, witches never did exist, then or now. Communists are real. Some critics
complained that the play was too cold and intellectual. Others said it wasn't a play at
all, but some kind of outburst, a political speech. Most people found a way of saying
that it wasn't worth bothering with. The play ran for a few months, playing to almost
empty houses. Then it closed. But the witch-hunt went on.
Arthur Miller had drawn a lot of attention to himself, and he soon got into trouble. In
1954 he was denied a passport to see a production of The Crucible in Belgium. In 1955 the
New York City Youth Board began an investigation into his political beliefs. In 1956 he
was called on to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He refused
to name names. He was cited for contempt of Congress. He was finally exonerated by the
courts, but not until 1958. By then, more and more people were refusing to testify
against others, and the witch-hunt was running out of steam. The hearings had gone on for
ten years, and the country's attention span was near its end. In all that time, no real
Communist conspiracy was ever uncovered. Just as no real witches were ever found in
Salem.
Another important thing happened in 1958: The Crucible was put on again, this time in a
small Off-Broadway theater. The same critics reviewed it again, Arthur Miller remembers,
and this time they were fairly swept away, the drama was as real to them [now, in 1958]
as it had been cold and undramatic before [in 1953]. Reasons were given for the new
impression; the main one was that the script had been improved. Miller hadn't changed a
word in the script. He began to think that the real reason had more to do with the
audience than the play: ...when McCarthyism was around, the... audience [was] quite
simply in fear of the theme of the play, which was witch-hunting. In [1958] they were not
afraid of it, and they began to look at the play (Theater Essays, p. 245).
Most of the time when an author writes a play about current events, the play is forgotten
as soon as the events are over. But The Crucible has come to be produced more often than
even Death of a Salesman, which was long considered to be Arthur Miller's most important
play. Let's see if we can figure out why.
If you're watching a really scary film, say, The Exorcist, you can always reassure
yourself by saying, It's only a movie. But you can't do that with The Crucible. The
witch-hunt really happened. You can go to Salem today and still find the house where
Rebecca Nurse lived, and see the door through which she was carried to her trial because
she was too old and sick to walk. You can stand on the rock where the gallows was built,
and look out over Salem Bay, the same bay 19 witches must have looked at just before they
were hanged. You can go to the courthouse and they'll show you the pins.
Nowadays we don't believe in witches or the Devil, at least we say we don't. But we're
still fascinated by the idea of supernatural forces and beings. And, for most of us, the
scarier the better. The popularity of horror movies comes from this fascination. The
Crucible also tells a strange and scary story. But in this play it's not witches or
demons that scare us--it's people. Arthur Miller's characters are ordinary folk. The
terror that sweeps over them like a wave is real; the people who were hanged really died.
In The Crucible there are no real witches; so what, then, possessed these people?
If you've ever built a wood fire, you know it doesn't start itself. And the biggest logs
won't burn right away; you have to begin with smaller sticks, the kindling. But there can
be no fire at all without a spark to set the kindling burning.
We can think of the Salem witchcraft as a kind of fire which, once started, could not be
quenched until it had burned itself out.
By this analogy, the big logs would be the belief in witchcraft itself. This belief was
an old one. In the ancient world, sorcery was everywhere--in Egypt and Babylon, even
among the clear-thinking Greeks and the otherwise sensible Romans. Only the Jews, among
all these ancient peoples, had laws forbidding the practice of witchcraft. It is first
mentioned in the Old Testament (Exodus 22:18), where it says, Thou shalt not suffer a
witch to live. It was on the authority of this one sentence in the Bible that the 19
witches were hanged in Salem in 1692.
But until the end of the Middle Ages, no one had made a scientific study of the spirit
world, and ideas about witches varied wildly from place to place and century to century.
Then in 1486 two Christian monks brought out a book called the Malleus Maleficarum (The
Hammer of Witches), the first book of demonology. Others soon followed (King James I of
England even wrote one himself), and by the time Reverend Hale walked into Salem in 1692
with an armload of such books, the study of witchcraft was considered an exact science.
When he says of his books, Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and
calculated, he is being sincere. He has studied these books for years and he honestly
believes himself to be an expert. So does everyone else. There is no reason to doubt him
or his ability to deal with an enemy he knows so much about. Without this solid and
specific belief in the reality of witchcraft, there might have been only a little
brushfire in Salem.
The kindling of the fire was to be found in the visible world. In 1623 King James I (the
same one who wrote the demonology book) had granted a charter to the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, under which the Puritans could own their own land. This charter enabled the
colony to thrive and grow over the next 60 years. But in 1684 the King revoked this
charter, saying the land belonged to the Crown, thereby making the Puritans' land titles
null and void. A lot of squabbling resulted, finally coming to a head in 1689 when the
Puritans overthrew the royal governor and reinstated the old charter. But they knew they
had no legal right to do this, and by 1692 the insecurity of their position had taken its
toll on their nerves.
Ownership of land wasn't the only issue. The Puritans had come to Massachusetts in the
first place not only to avoid religious persecution in England, as the history books say,
but to establish a New Jerusalem, God's visible Kingdome on Earth. For this reason it was
natural for the Puritans to assume that God's archenemy Satan would single them out for
his most ferocious attacks. In fact, when witchcraft first broke out, many believed it to
be the beginning of Armageddon, the great battle between Darkness and Light that would
signal the end of the world. But even before this, the Puritans had already spent several
years in constant and growing anxiety about the future of God's visible Kingdome.
There remains but the spark to set these dry sticks ablaze. The Puritans could hardly
have picked a more difficult place to found their New Jerusalem. The ground was full of
rocks, the winters were long and bitterly cold, and the forests surrounding their towns
were infested with Indians, who continually raided the outlying farms. But the Puritans
prospered by banding together. This process not only helped them overcome danger and
difficulty but it gave them ample opportunity for minding each other's business.
To the Puritans, man was a creature steeped in sin, and there was nothing he could do to
save himself from the eternal fires of hell. A few believers--the elect, as the Puritans
called themselves--God had chosen to save, or justify. Because God had justified them
already, the elect naturally obeyed his laws. But you could outwardly obey these laws yet
still not be saved. Puritan preachers never tired of railing against the meritmongers,
those who thought they could buy their way into heaven with good works. On the other
hand, it was easy to prove that you were damned--all you had to do was break the law. So
there was tremendous pressure on everyone at least to appear to be one of the elect.
All of this is complicated, even to an adult. But put yourself in the place of a
nine-year-old girl named Betty Parris. All you know is that the winter has been long and
boring, that the grownups are more cranky than usual so they punish you more often, and
that you must have sinned with your teeth because one of them aches. If all this isn't
enough, you have to be better than the other children in Salem Village, because your
father is the minister. For weeks now your older cousin Abigail Williams has been making
you sit with her and listen to your father's slave Tituba tell shocking stories of her
former life as a heathen in the Barbados. It was bad enough with just the two of you, but
Abby never could keep a secret, and now there are ten or twelve of her friends who turn
up at the back door as soon as your father walks out the front, begging Tituba for more.
At first it was exciting, in a scary sort of way, but lately Tituba's taken to acting out
her heathen rituals, showing how they used to conjure spirits to foretell the future. You
know you're damned if you keep this up, but Abby's slammed the door on your only way out:
she'll kill you if you tell. Your soul is suffocating in sin, and you can't sleep any
more for fear of the nightmares that always come.
The pressure was enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown. Betty Parris freaked out.
Abigail Williams, for all her daring, wasn't immune, and soon she began trying to fly and
bursting into howls whenever her uncle prayed aloud or read the Scriptures, just like her
cousin Betty. Then Betty, in one of her fits, let slip the name Tituba, and... but this
is where the play starts.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: THE PLOT
It's the spring of 1692. The whole village of Salem is in an uproar. The Reverend Samuel
Parris' daughter Betty won't wake up, and the Putnams' little Ruth is walking around like
a zombie. The night before, Reverend Parris had heard a funny noise in the woods outside
his house, and stumbled onto a frightening scene: his black slave Tituba was waving her
arms over a boiling kettle, muttering wild-sounding gibberish, and around the fire a
dozen girls were dancing--dancing, strictly forbidden by Puritan law. Among the girls
were Betty and Ruth and his niece Abigail Williams. When he jumped out on them, everyone
screamed and ran, all except Betty, who fainted dead away. And now she won't wake up.
The house is buzzing with people, and every other word is witchcraft. Reverend Parris
doesn't want to believe it, but he's sent for an expert just in case--the Reverend John
Hale of the neighboring village of Beverly. When Hale arrives he tries to wake Betty, but
she remains lifeless. Then he questions Abigail and Tituba. Some of the other village
folk who look on are skeptical about witchcraft, especially John Proctor, whose serving
girl, Mary Warren, had been with the girls the night before. Whip the nonsense out of
them, Proctor suggests. Another doubter is old Rebecca Nurse, twenty-six times a grandma,
who believes the girls are just going through one of their silly seasons.
But Reverend Hale's questions are so sharp, and Tituba is so scared for her beloved
Betty, that she blurts out that she was conjuring the dead. And when Hale presses her,
she realizes her only way out is to confess. She gets carried away and begins to name
others that she saw with the Devil. Soon Abigail is swept up in Tituba's ecstatic
confession, and she too names names. Betty wakes up and joins them.
In the next few days other girls--including Mary Warren--are added to their number, and
within a week they have cried out (as they called it) 14 witches. An official court has
been set up. John Proctor is particularly worried about Abigail Williams, who has become
the girls' ringleader. Abigail had been his maidservant before Mary Warren. When John's
wife, Elizabeth, fell ill, he had turned to Abigail in his loneliness, and at least once
made love with her in the barn. He repented it immediately, and confessed to Elizabeth,
who put Abigail out of the house. Now Proctor is afraid that Abigail means to dance with
him on his wife's grave. He doesn't believe in witches, and he knows what mischief
Abigail is capable of, so he decides to go to the court and denounce her. But before he
can leave, the marshalls come to arrest Elizabeth: Abigail has cried her out.
By now the jail is bursting with witches, and no one seems safe. Rebecca Nurse, the most
respectable person in the Village, has been convicted and sentenced to hang. John Proctor
brings Mary Warren to the court with a statement saying it's all pretense. This is a
serious accusation, and the judges--Hathorne and Deputy Governor Danforth--want proof. So
Proctor confesses his lechery with Abigail; but when Elizabeth is brought in to
corroborate the charge, she denies it, thinking to spare her husband's name. Then Abigail
and the other girls turn on Mary Warren and cry her out. Her resolve collapses and she
renounces her statement. Proctor witched her into writing it, she says. Proctor is hauled
off to jail.
By October, 11 witches have gone to the gallows. On the morning John Proctor and seven
others--including Rebecca Nurse--are to hang, strange rumors are going around. Other
towns have risen up against their witch courts and overthrown them. Reverend Hale, who
had believed John Proctor's story and had denounced the proceedings when Proctor was
arrested, has now returned, and he's trying to get the prisoners to confess and save
their lives, even if it means lying. Perhaps worst of all, Abigail Williams has
disappeared, but not before breaking into her uncle's strongbox and stealing all his
money. Despite rising doubt in the town, Danforth and Hathorne refuse to call off the
executions, because such an action will imply that they murdered the 11 that have already
hanged. Their only hope is to get John Proctor to confess. So they bring in his wife,
Elizabeth, now four months pregnant, to persuade him. At first Proctor gives in, but when
he realizes they want to use his name to save their own skins, he rips up his confession
and goes to his death with a clear conscience.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: JOHN PROCTOR
If you were to ask one of John Proctor's sons what he wants to be when he grows up, he'd
probably say, My daddy. It's hard to imagine a better role model for a little boy than
John Proctor. He's big and strong and does the backbreaking work of the farm all by
himself. True, he has a temper, and isn't afraid to use the whip when you've been bad.
But that's not very often, because John Proctor is the kind of man who makes you want to
do what he asks. And when he praises you, it's like God Himself reached down from heaven
and ruffled your hair. Maybe best of all, he knows how to make you laugh--he may be
strict, but he's no sourpuss.
In the community of Salem, John Proctor is important, not for what he is--he's just a
farmer--but for who he is. No one is more generous in helping his neighbors, and no one
is more honest in his dealings. If he has a fault, it's that he's too honest: when he
thinks you're wrong, he'll tell you to your face, even in front of other people. Anyone
on the receiving end of such blunt criticism is bound to resent it. And John Proctor has
made some enemies in Salem by his plain speaking. Reverend Parris is one.
But maybe if Proctor hadn't been so admirable, he wouldn't be in the mess he's in.
Abigail Williams fell in love with John Proctor's strength and honesty. What young woman
wouldn't see him as the man of her dreams? His wife was sick, he was lonely, and he made
the perfectly human mistake of succumbing to Abigail's adoration. But he made an even
bigger mistake, as far as Abigail is concerned, when he rejected her and went back to his
wife. As the saying goes, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Abigail pays him
back with a vengeance.
Elizabeth Proctor must have fallen for John just as hard as Abigail did. But Elizabeth
seems almost afraid of her feelings, and doesn't express them easily. Her husband's
passion and sexuality no doubt frightened her, and he probably felt rebuffed and
disappointed when she didn't--or couldn't--return his ardent expressions of love. Then
after his affair with Abigail, he not only felt guilty but shamed by Elizabeth's
self-control. She says, I never thought you but a good man, John--only somewhat
bewildered. How can he believe such meekness? If their positions were reversed, he'd have
torn her limb from limb.
John Proctor is not the same man to himself as he is to others. In a way, their
admiration revolts him, because he is disgusted with himself. Elizabeth hints at his
problem when she says, The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. And the
judgment is harsh: John Proctor is a fraud. Before Abigail came along and ruined his
peace, he was always sure of himself. He still is, but what he is sure of now is that
nothing he can ever do will be pure and honest again.
In Christian doctrine, there is one sin for which there can be no forgiveness. It is
called despair, and it means giving up hope because you're so bad not even God can
forgive you. John Proctor is heading toward despair when the play begins, and he is
pushed closer to the edge as the witch madness unfolds. In the end he finds his goodness
and is saved, but it's a close call.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ELIZABETH PROCTOR
The first we hear of Elizabeth Proctor is from Abigail Williams, who calls her a bitter,
lying, cold, sniveling woman. Abigail has a tendency to blacken anyone who doesn't like
her. But when we finally meet Elizabeth herself, she does seem pretty cool toward her
husband, John. And if she's not exactly bitter about John's fling with Abigail, she isn't
happy about it either. But who would be? She has a right to be jealous, and suspicious,
too, especially when she finds out that the last time John was in town he saw Abigail
alone--not in a crowd, as he had first told her. Elizabeth wants John to go back to the
judges and expose Abigail's lie about there being witchcraft in Salem, not just to help
the town, but to prove he's not still in love with Abigail. When John loses his temper
because he can't stand being judged any more, Elizabeth stands up to him:
...you [will] come to know that I will be your only wife, or no wife at all!
Cold, suspicious, possessive: not an attractive picture of Elizabeth Proctor. The
question is, what was she like before John strayed? Later on, when she sees him for the
last time before he's hanged, she answers this question herself: It needs a cold wife to
prompt lechery.
This painful honesty about herself brings out another quality in Elizabeth Proctor.
Abigail calls her a gossiping liar, but John thinks of her as that goodness, and tells
everyone that Elizabeth never told a lie in her Life. Indeed, according to her husband,
Elizabeth can't lie. This sounds like an exaggeration, and maybe John is making her out
to be better than she is because he himself feels so guilty about having betrayed her. He
could also be bragging because he's proud of her goodness.
When she does tell a lie, it is to save John's name: she denies to the court that her
husband was an adulterer. Ironically, this lie does the opposite of what she intended,
because John's already confessed--now it looks like he's lying. As Reverend Hale says,
it's a natural lie to tell, and even though it didn't work, it took some courage for
Elizabeth to lie to the most powerful authority in the province.
Courage has been defined as being scared and doing it anyway. This describes Elizabeth's
behavior when she is arrested. Although obviously scared to death, she promises to fear
nothing. And then, as if to prove it, perhaps to herself as well as the others in the
room, she says, Tell the children I have gone to visit someone sick. This may be
whistling in the dark--talking about everyday things to keep her fear from overwhelming
her--but the fact that she can think of her children at a time like this is impressive.
But Elizabeth's courage is not blind--she's intelligent as well as brave. When she hears
that her name has been somewhat mentioned in court, she realizes Abigail is out to get
her. It won't be enough for John to talk to the court about Abigail; he will have to go
to Abigail herself. From one tiny due, Elizabeth figures out Abigail's whole monstrous
plan to take her place with John. And she instantly knows what to do about it.
After her arrest, and all through her trial, Elizabeth refuses to confess to witchcraft,
even though this lie would save her life. This is brave and noble. But as soon as she
discovers she is pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to tell her jailers immediately, knowing
that this fact will probably spare her, at least for a while.
And in the last act Elizabeth shows not only wisdom but great love for her husband when
he is agonizing over whether to confess. He asks her what he should do. She knows he is
so confused that he will probably do whatever she says. She desperately wants him alive,
especially now that a baby's on the way. But she refuses to choose for him: As you will,
I would have it, leaving him free to decide his own destiny. But she does give him her
blessing:
Only be sure of this, for I know it now:
Whatever you will do, it is a good man does it.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ABIGAIL WILLIAMS
If there is a bad guy in The Crucible, Abigail Williams is it. She is the one who first
led the girls to Tituba for dancing in the woods and conjuring spirits. When Tituba is
forced to confess, Abigail jumps right in and the other girls follow her. During the
witch trials she is the girls' leader, bringing them into the court and presiding over
their torments. She intimidates everyone--the girls, the townsfolk, even the judges. And
then, when it begins to look as if the tide is turning against her, she gets out while
the getting is good, robbing her uncle, Reverend Parris, before she goes.
Abigail is a lot like the little girl in the movie The Bad Seed. In the movie, a
nine-year-old terrorizes her family and the whole community. She murders several people,
including her parents. She gets away with it because no one can believe that a child
could be so evil. Anyone who does find her out, she kills.
Abigail lies without shame, threatens without fear, and thinks of nothing of sticking a
needle two inches into her own belly in order to bring about the murder of Elizabeth
Proctor. And she gets away with most of it.
But Abigail isn't a child. She's had a grown-up love affair with John Proctor, and has
lost her childish faith in the lying lessons I was taught by all these Christian women
and their covenanted men. A child, when hurt, may strike back in anger. But only an adult
could so coolly plot and execute the ingenious revenge Abigail plans for Elizabeth.
The important thing to decide about Abigail is whether you think she's evil or not.
Without doubt, almost all her actions have evil consequences, and if there is good in
her, we don't get to see much of it. She takes the lead in crying out witches; the other
girls take their cues from her. In a very short time she has the whole town at her mercy,
and she uses this power unscrupulously. In fact, a real witch could hardly have done a
better job of destroying the community.
But is Abigail the only one to blame? if so, then what happened in Salem was a fluke, a
case of one bad apple spoiling the barrel. Everyone else is therefore innocent; they just
happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
One thing that supports this idea is an old convention of writing plays that goes back to
the Middle Ages. Certain plays called moralities always had a stock character called the
Vice. The Vice was a troublemaker; his whole purpose was to stir things up, to set
characters against each other, and to try to destroy the established order of things.
Often the Vice was the Devil in disguise, but since these plays were put on by the
church, he always lost in the end, most of the time by getting caught in one of his own
traps. Abigail certainly fits this description, except for the last item--she doesn't get
caught.
But some believe that considering Abigail the bad guy misses Arthur Miller's point. These
people think that the real bad guy in The Crucible is superstition. With or without
Abigail, there'd have been no witch madness if there'd been no belief in witches. If you
look at it this way, Abigail, although you'd hardly call her innocent, is not entirely to
blame either. Other girls cry out witches too; and it looks as if they were prompted, not
by Abigail, but by their parents. If Abigail is evil, she's not alone. The madness
itself, caused by superstition, is to blame. One person alone could never wreak such
havoc.
But however you think of her, Abigail Williams is a fascinating character. We see her
only twice--in Act I and Act III--but her presence and her influence dominate the whole
play.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: MARY WARREN
Poor Mary Warren! When we first meet her briefly in Act I, she's afraid of everything.
She was afraid to dance with the other girls in the woods. Now that the girls have been
caught, she's afraid she'll be hanged as a witch, if Abigail doesn't tell the whole
truth. Most of all she's afraid of Abigail--until John Proctor comes in and scares her
back home.
But in Act II, when Proctor calls Mary a mouse, Elizabeth corrects him: It is a mouse no
more. Now that Mary's an official of the court, she can stand up even to John Proctor's
rage. Has Mary Warren suddenly become brave? Of course not. Her courage comes from the
court, from being one of the group.
And in Act III, not even John Proctor's great strength can keep her from breaking under
the stress of being cried out by Abigail and the other girls. Mary's more afraid of
Abigail than anything, even the fact that God damns all liars, and this fear fully
overwhelms her.
Is this a totally spineless creature? Probably not. Few people could stand up under the
ordeal that Mary Warren is put through in Act III, and it's a wonder she holds out as
long as she does. Considering how easily frightened Mary is by nature, she shows
tremendous courage in coming to the court at all. True, Proctor is making her do it; but
once the ordeal has begun, Mary holds her own against Abigail longer than anybody. But
when Proctor is discredited, she loses his support; and when even the judges turn against
her, Mary finally breaks.
Mary can hardly be called evil. She tells the truth, unless she is intimidated into doing
otherwise. She makes the poppet as a gift for Elizabeth. Maybe Mary does this to make up
for being away from her chores for so long, but maybe this is the action of a kind heart
as well as a guilty conscience.
Above all, Mary's naive: she's slow to believe evil of anyone. Perhaps this is why she
cannot resist the evil that overwhelms her--she didn't know how strong it was because she
didn't know it was there in the first place.
And could it also be loneliness that draws Mary Warren into this catastrophe? Out on
Proctor's farm, John and Elizabeth have each other and the children for
companionship--they are a family. Mary is an orphan, an outsider, living on the Proctor's
charity. Three times she disobeys Proctor's orders and sneaks into town: once to watch
the other girls dance, again the next day to see the great doings in the world, and
finally to go to court as an official. Is it excitement she's after? In part, perhaps,
but in town she is a member of a group; at home, she is just a lone servant. Maybe what
crushes her in Act III is not just the harshness of the judges and the hysteria of her
friends, but her isolation. She's not afraid to tell the truth, she's afraid to stand
alone.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: REVEREND JOHN HALE
Arthur Miller describes Reverend Hale as nearing forty, a tight-skinned, eager-eyed
intellectual. An intellectual is usually thought of as someone with his head in the
clouds, who spends so much time thinking great thoughts that he's inept in the real world
of human emotions. There is some truth in this image of John Hale. He knows a lot about
witchcraft; but he knows almost nothing about the people of Salem or the contention that
is wracking the town. How pompous and arrogant he must sound when he says, Have no fear
now--we shall find [the Devil] out if he has come among us, and I mean to crush him
utterly if he has shown his face!
And yet he has every reason to be confident. To Hale, demonology is an exact science, for
he has spent his whole life in the study of it. But he is not just a bookworm, he is a
minister of God. His goal is light, goodness and its preservation, and he is excited by
being called upon to face what may be a bloody fight with the Fiend himself. All his
years of preparation may now finally be put to the test.
He fails, and the evil that follows his first appearance totally overwhelms him. Why? Is
the fault in his character? Is he not as smart as he thinks he is? Is he a fool, whose
meddling lit the fuse to the bomb that blew up the town? Some say yes, and much of the
play supports this answer. What looks like success at the end of Act I soon carries Hale
out of his depth, and every time he appears after that he is less sure of himself. At the
end of the play he has been completely crushed: he, a minister of the light, has come to
do the Devil's work. I come to counsel Christians they should belie themselves. There is
blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!
It's hard to imagine going through a more horrifying experience than the disillusionment
of the Reverend Mr. Hale. All those years of dedicated, loving study made worthless by a
band of hysterical and not-at-all innocent girls. Made worse than worthless--his learning
ends up sending nineteen people to the gallows. And worst of all, he is helpless to stop
it, having started it in the first place.
Is there evil in this man? Perhaps. According to Christian doctrine, one of the seven
deadly (or damnable) sins is pride. In a way it's the worst one, because it was pride
that made the devil rebel against God. And Reverend Hale, when he first appears, feels
the pride of the specialist whose unique knowledge has at last been publicly called for.
He certainly gets his comeuppance.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: REVEREND SAMUEL PARRIS
At the beginning of the play, when his little girl Betty lies sick on her bed, Reverend
Parris is less worried about her condition than about what the neighbors will think if it
turns out Betty is witched. Like a lot of selfish people, he feels persecuted: anyone who
disagrees with Reverend Parris is his enemy, part of a conspiracy that's out to get him.
He is convinced that John Proctor is the leader of this conspiracy, because Proctor's
always criticizing him. Proctor doesn't come to church anymore because, as he says,
Reverend Parris can talk of nothing but hell and damnation--Take it to heart, Mr. Parris.
There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever
mention God any more.
Parris also seems to be greedy. Proctor tells Reverend Hale in Act II that Parris can't
pray to God without he have golden candlesticks upon the altar. Parris claims that in
addition to his salary Salem him owes him money for firewood, and he wants the deed to
his house--two things no minister had demanded before.
Parris is unhappy in Salem, and maybe he has his reasons. He says at one point, I cannot
offer one proposition without there be a howling riot of argument. In the past few years,
two ministers had left Salem in disgust with the town's contentiousness and stinginess.
Thomas Putnam had even had one of them, George Burroughs, put in jail for debts he did
not owe. On top of that, Parris is a Harvard graduate, which his predecessors were not,
so he feels he deserves more than, the town is willing to give.
Whatever the reasons for his discontent, Reverend Parris doesn't seem to be a very nice
person anyway. He bullies and mistreats his servant Tituba, and tries to do the same with
Abigail. But he flatters and fawns on those in power, such as Thomas Putnam and Danforth.
With everyone else he is arrogant and sometimes downright insulting.
Almost every time he opens his mouth it is to attack someone. When the court is first set
up, he hides behind it like a child behind a parent, and he loses no chance to set the
court against his enemies, especially John Proctor. When Francis Nurse presents the court
with a petition in favor of his wife Rebecca, it is Parris' idea that the 91 people who
signed the petition should be arrested. As long as the court is in power, Parris is its
staunchest support. But in Act IV, when the town is beginning to turn against the court,
Parris is the first to look for a way out.
Imagine his horror when Abigail disappears at the end of the play. The court has lost its
star witness, the leader of the girls on whose testimony all the witches have been
hanged. Parris himself has lost a niece, but worst of all, Abigail robbed his strongbox
before she left, and now he's penniless. As Salem's pastor, he should have protected his
flock. Not only did he let the wolves into the fold, he joined in the attack. Now the
wolves are in trouble, and Parris is left without a friend in the world.
It's hard to feel sorry for the Reverend Samuel Parris. But there is something pathetic
about a man who is so insecure that he has to persecute others to save his own skin.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: DEPUTY GOVERNOR DANFORTH
Overall, Deputy Governor Danforth does more damage in this play than anyone else, even
Abigail Williams. As Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, he is the second most powerful man
in the province. As head of the court, he has the authority to try, convict, and execute
anyone he sees fit. Abigail may cry out innocent people as witches; Danforth hangs them.
Some would say he is a rigid man, especially in his sticking to the letter of the law. In
Act III he will not let Giles Corey submit his evidence unless it is in proper affidavit
form. In Act IV, unless John Proctor will sign a written confession, it is no confession.
In everything he does, Danforth is most concerned with staying within the precise limits
of the statutes.
But look at what he's faced with. To him there is a moving plot to topple Christ in the
country, and he is willing to use every ounce of his prodigious power to prevent that
from happening. If he gives in the slightest bit, God's whole defensive line will break.
Considering the way he sees the situation, it takes tremendous strength and courage to
stand so firm against such formidable attack.
And don't forget that to the Puritans the law, with which Danforth seems so obsessed, was
made not by man but by God. Massachusetts at this time is a theocracy--a government
ordained by God as his visible Kingdome on Earth. Reverend Hale is thinking exactly like
Danforth when, he tells Proctor in Act II:
Theology [literally, God's word], sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be
accounted small.
Even bending the law a little is dangerous business, especially at such a dangerous time
as this.
Ironically, it is Danforth's strength and courage that allow the witch madness to grow to
such monstrous proportions. A weaker man would have broken under the strain; a man less
brave would have quailed before hanging someone like Rebecca Nurse. Under a shakier hand,
the court's authority might have disintegrated, and after some confusion, life would have
returned to normal.
But for all his rigidity, there seems to be no malice in Danforth, as there is in Parris
and Hathorne. His mentions are good, heroic, even. He just happens to be wrong. And
nineteen innocent people are hanged on his signature.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: REBECCA NURSE
Although she appears only twice in The Crucible, Rebecca Nurse is important to everyone
else in the play. Her reputation in Salem is so high that when she's first accused of
witchcraft, hardly anyone can believe it. To Reverend Hale, if Rebecca Nurse be tainted,
then nothing's left to stop the whole green world from burning. To those like Proctor who
don't believe in witchcraft, Rebecca's being cried out is the most monstrous lie
imaginable. To the witch-hunters, she's a great catch.
Rebecca is perhaps less a person than a symbol of sanity in a world that's lost its mind.
She retains her dignity and courage to the very end. When asked one last time if she will
confess, she says, Why, it is a lie, it is a lie; how may I damn myself? I cannot, I
cannot.
But her answer may express something else besides courage. She's an old woman, close to
her end anyway. Her life so far has been blameless, why spoil it now? It's not common
sense.
Perhaps this sensible attitude helps her keep her humor as well. Her last line, spoken as
she almost collapses on her way out to be hanged, is, I've had no breakfast.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: GILES COREY
Giles Corey is superstitious about his wife's reading books, and he's forever taking his
neighbors to court on the smallest excuse. He's afraid of no one, and has a sharp tongue
for anybody who thinks he can be made a fool of. But he makes a fool of himself by being
so ready to scrap all the time. He's 83, and set in his ways. In any other play he'd be a
comic figure: the stock character of the crotchety old man. But this play is not a
comedy, and for all his comic characteristics, Giles Corey is destroyed along with all
the other victims of the witch madness.
Giles is more than a stubborn old geezer. Life was extremely hard in those days. Just to
be alive at age 83 was in itself a remarkable achievement. But Giles shows little sign of
running out of steam: John Proctor thinks nothing of asking Giles' help in dragging his
lumber home.
Is Giles as bull-headed as he at first appears? Before he married Martha, his third wife
(he buried the other two), he had little time for church. But now he's learned his
commandments and makes a serious effort to pray. In Act I he passes up a perfect chance
to twit his hated neighbor Thomas Putnam--Putnam claims that Proctor's lumber belongs to
him--and instead stays to hear what the learned Reverend Hale has to say. Giles may be
slow to change his mind, but he's not against learning something new.
But just because he's slow, it doesn't mean he's dumb. He may never understand the
subtleties of demonology, but thirty-three time in court has taught Giles Corey how to
recognize greed when he sees it. And he knows enough about the law to keep silent when he
is formally charged with witchcraft. By not answering the indictment, he dies a good
Christian under the law, and the court cannot confiscate his property, as it did with the
other witches. In this way his sons inherit, and he keeps his land out of Putnam's
clutches.
In the end, the way he dies tells the most about him:
Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but
two words. More weight, he says. And died.
As Elizabeth Proctor says, It were a fearsome man, Giles Corey.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: SETTING
The Crucible is set in the small settlement of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The first
three acts take place in the spring, and the fourth act in the fall.
Actually there were two Salems--Salem Town and its tiny suburb, Salem Village. Reverend
Parris' house was in Salem Village, and it was here that his slave Tituba, his daughter
Betty, and his niece Abigail Williams first came down with witchcraft. The trials,
however, were held for the most part in the large meeting house in Salem Town.
Each act is set within a fairly small room: Act I is in a bedroom in Reverend Parris'
house; Act II in the Proctors' living room; Act III in an anteroom to the main hall of
the meeting house, or church; and Act IV in a cell in the Salem jail. These settings give
an impression of containment, almost of claustrophobia, as if we're boxed in, caught in a
trap. As the pressure builds in each act, a sense of panic is bound to set in. Of course,
this is exactly what the victims of the witch-hunt must be feeling. Arthur Miller's
settings help us identify with the characters, by putting us, in a sense, in the same
room with them.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: THEMES
A number of thematic threads run through The Crucible. Some of them contradict others,
some of them overlap. And no one of them completely explains the play. You'll find that
some of them ring more true to you than others, but you can find evidence to support all
of them in the play. These themes are:
1. SOCIAL DRAMA
Arthur Miller is dramatizing a bizarre but not uncommon social phenomenon. The
explanation for the witch madness can be found in the makeup of the society itself. The
play was written at a time when American society was threatened by a similar madness,
over communism instead of witchcraft. The author is telling us that it might happen
again, and we'd better do something about it.
2. A PERSONAL TRAGEDY
The Crucible is really about one man's struggle with his conscience. The whole play
revolves around John Proctor. The witch madness serves only to intensify and focus
Proctor's energies on his problems with his wife, his neighbors, and himself.
3. HYSTERIA
The play demonstrates an outbreak of that peculiar insanity called mass hysteria. We get
to see how easily reasonable human beings can become unhinged in an environment that
allows little opportunity for letting off steam. Once the seal is broken on the pressure
cooker, it explodes.
4. SUPERSTITION
There were no real witches in Salem. Without the superstitious belief in witchcraft, this
catastrophe could never have happened. Arthur Miller blames them that quail to bring men
out of ignorance for this tragedy, and is making a plea for a more enlightened approach
to religious beliefs.
5. GREED AND VENGEANCE
Several characters find monstrous profit in the witch madness, and manipulate events for
their own ends. Thomas Putnam, the richest man in town, acquires quite a bit of land by
having his daughter Ruth cry out his neighbors. And Abigail Williams accomplishes a
pretty sweet revenge on the Proctors when her affair with John is broken off.
6. AUTHORITY
This play examines the question of authority: who has the power, and on what is that
power based? What is the proper use of authority, and what is abuse of power? The judges
believe they derive their authority from God, and so carry on the witch-hunt as if they
are on a holy mission. They're deceived by the girls, and refuse to believe the obvious
truth when it's staring them in the face. What went wrong?
7. THEOCRACY
The separation of church and state, which is one of the cornerstones of the American
Constitution, did not exist in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Theocracy means
Government by God, and the Puritans believed that they were establishing God's visible
Kingdome on earth--the state was to be governed by God's laws. But this mixing up of the
laws of God and the laws of men led directly to the legal chaos of the Salem witch
trials.
8. JUSTICE
The concept of justice is central to most of Arthur Miller's plays, especially The
Crucible, where he dedicates the entire third act to a courtroom drama. How can we
guarantee that a person accused of a crime gets a fair trial? And how should the guilty
be punished?
9. HISTORICAL DRAMA
The Crucible tells a story of the American past, a time when many of the basic principles
of our society were formed. It's possible, the playwright suggests, that some of the
things that were wrong in 1692 are still wrong today.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: STYLE
Plays can be classified in two major varieties: plays of episodic action and plays of
continuous action. Shakespeare's plays are episodic. No one scene is very long, and the
action jumps from place to place, sometimes skipping over years in between. On the other
hand, Greek tragedies like Oedipus Rex and some modern plays such as Eugene O'Neil's Long
Day's Journey into Night, follow what are called the three unities: of time--the action
usually takes place within a 24-hour period; of place--there is only one location,, and
of action--there is no break in the action from beginning to end.
The Crucible falls somewhere in between. The time span is about three-and-a-half months;
the action occurs in four different places, although it never leaves Salem; and there is
a gap of at least a week between each act (between Acts III and IV almost three months
elapse). But within each act the action is continuous from curtain to curtain.
One advantage of the continuous-action method is that it allows the author to build
tension or suspense gradually. It also can be less confusing for an audience, because we
don't have to stop and figure out where we are every few minutes. And, finally, it allows
us to get to know the main characters very well, by letting us watch them for a long time
at a stretch. This is especially important in The Crucible, where we come to understand
what happened in Salem in 1692 through the experience of one man, John Proctor.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the style of The Crucible is its language. These
people speak a dialect that is much closer to Shakespeare's English than to our own.
Shakespeare's time was full of adventure and discovery, and his language reflected that
excitement and energy.
The Puritans themselves were outspoken. One reason they were driven to the New World in
the first place was that they couldn't keep quiet about religious matters. And most of
them came from the lower classes, whose language is generally very earthy.
Add these things up, and then add in the rugged life these pioneers were forced to lead
in the early years of American settlement, and you come up with a way of speaking that is
sometimes called muscular.
Arthur Miller has made his characters speak the way they think--bluntly, directly, and
with little concern for fancy phrase-making. He took some lines straight out of writings
of the time, including transcripts of the witch trials. The result is a kind of rough
poetry, sometimes of great power.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: POINT OF VIEW
Arthur Miller has chosen to tell the story of the Salem witch trials from the point of
view of one of its victims, John Proctor. This personalizes the story for us; by the end
we know Proctor better than anyone else in the play, and we feel his suffering all the
more intensely because we care about him. We also come to understand what happens by
following and sharing Proctor's struggle to understand it himself.
Proctor is an extremely attractive character. He is as good and honest as we ourselves
would like to be, and yet he's not perfect. His mistakes are those of a human being, not
a superman. By concentrating the action of the play on John Proctor, Arthur Miller makes
it easy for us not only to sympathize, but also to identify with him and the other
victims of the witch-hunt: we find out what it would feel like to be caught up in such
madness.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: FORM AND STRUCTURE
For the published version of The Crucible, Arthur Miller has inserted passages of prose
in which he comments on the background of the story or the characters. These comments
tell you a lot about Miller's thinking, but they interrupt the flow of the action, and
you may want to skip them the first time you read the play. Then you can go back and read
them all together, or pick them up along the way on your second read-through. You should
always read a play twice: you'll be amazed how much you missed the first time, and how
much more sense it makes the second time around when you know what's going to happen
next.
The Crucible has a lot of characters, 21 speaking parts in all, plus quite a few people
who are talked about but never appear onstage, like Ruth Putnam and Martha Corey. Each of
these characters has a story to tell, and every story is important. It's easy to become
lost unless you can see how each subplot ties into and advances the main plot, which is
the flareup of witch panic in Salem.
The story is indeed complicated, but Arthur Miller makes it easier to follow by the way
he has designed the play. He begins each act by setting up a terrible possibility, and
ends each act by bringing that terrible thing to pass.
In Act I the question is: Will the town leap to witchcraft? The curtain falls on Tituba,
Abigail, and Betty ecstatically crying out witches.
In Act II the question is: Will the Proctors get caught up by the witch-hunt? The act
ends with Elizabeth Proctor being led away in chains.
In Act III the question is: Will Abigail foil John Proctor's attempt to discredit her?
The answer is, yes, and more, for Proctor himself is arrested as a witch.
Then in Act IV the question is: Will John Proctor hang? He does.
This repeated pattern of question and answer--Will the worst happen? Yes.--is the rhythm
of the play. You can think of what happens between the setup and the payoff in each act
as a kind of tug-of-war: some characters pull toward catastrophe, others pull away from
it, and invariably the first group overpowers the second. If you think about the action
in terms of this tug-of-war, the plot will be a lot easier to follow.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: SOME NOTES ON READING THE PLAY
There's a difference between reading a play and reading a novel. The most obvious thing
is that a play is all dialogue, whereas a novel will often have many paragraphs of prose
describing what a character is thinking. In a play you have to figure out what a
character is thinking by what he says, and what others say about him, keeping in mind
that people don't always speak the truth, or at least the whole truth.
Another difference between a novel and a play is the audience each is intended for. When
a novel appears in print, it is as ready as it's going to be for its audience, the
individual reader. But the script of a play is a blueprint for a performance by actors,
in makeup and costume, on a stage set, before an audience of more than one. Whatever
ideas a playwright has in mind, whatever words he puts on paper, the play is meant to be
seen and heard, not just read silently by one person slouching in an armchair.
But even if you can't actually attend a performance, and have to settle for reading the
script, there is a way to get a more complete idea of what the play's supposed to be.
Read some of it aloud, playing the different characters: How would you say these words if
you were in the same situation? What gesture would you use to make this point? Maybe you
can get a friend to try it with you. It may sound silly or embarrassing, but it really
does help. And it's fun.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: THE STORY
Although the action is continuous in each act of The Crucible, this guide breaks the acts
into what are called French scenes. A new French scene begins every time a major
character enters or exits.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT I, SCENE 1
From the moment the curtain rises, we know something is wrong. A little girl, Betty
Parris, lies inert on the bed. What's the matter with her? Is she sick? Hurt? Her father,
Reverend Samuel Parris, is weeping and praying frantically over her. The next three
things that happen tell us things are really bad: 1) the black slave Tituba, obviously
very frightened, comes in begging Parris to tell her that her Betty's not goin' to die,
and Parris furiously drives her out; 2) Betty's cousin Abigail Williams comes in to
announce a message from Dr. Griggs, which means that Betty's been like this for some
time; and 3) Susanna Walcott delivers the doctor's message: he cannot help Betty, so her
affliction must be from unnatural things, meaning witchcraft.
Parris' first reaction is to deny that Betty's witched, which seems natural: it's a
horrifying thought. Horrifying, but not out of the question, because Reverend Hale, a
witchcraft expert from Beverly, has already been sent for and is on his way. Both Parris
and Abigail warn Susanna to speak nothin' of it in the village on her way back to the
doctor. This seems natural, too: Parris is trying to avoid panic among his congregation.
But we soon discover that Parris is more worried about his position in the village than
he is about his daughter's health. Throughout the following interrogation, during which
Abigail admits that she, Betty, and Tituba were dancing in the woods, Parris mentions his
enemies four times, saying clearly at one point, There is a faction that is sworn to
drive me from my pulpit. Do you understand that? In other words, the worst part of this
scandal is that it began in his own house, a fact his enemies will surely take advantage
of. For the rest of the play, Parris is consistent in his self-centeredness. No matter
what happens to anybody else, he will always be concerned only about himself.
For her part, Abigail at first appears to be humble and repentant. She confesses that
they danced, and she's willing to be whipped for it, even if they did it just for sport.
But Parris, in his anxiety about his own reputation, insinuates that Abigail's name is
not entirely white in the town. Goodwife Proctor, it is said, comes so rarely to the
church this year for she will not sit so close to something soiled, meaning Abigail, who
used to work as the Proctors' servant.
Abigail tells us a lot: instead of answering the accusation, she attacks the accuser. She
says Goody Proctor hates her because Abigail would not be her slave; twice she calls
Goody Proctor a liar. (Elizabeth Proctor's truthfulness will be very important later.)
Abigail then turns her wrath on Parris: Do you begrudge my bed, uncle? (Later on, in Act
II, Abigail will once again be accused of wrongdoing, and she will get out of it in
exactly the same way.)
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT I, SCENE 2
Parris has no chance to recover from this onslaught, for now the Putnams, Ann and then
Thomas, come in, full of news. Their daughter Ruth has been stricken as well, and they
are certain it's from the Devil's touch. Parris' manner changes abruptly: with Tituba and
Abigail he was sharp and angry, but now he seems most anxious to please. The Putnams must
be important people, and we soon find out why. When Parris pleads with them, leap not to
witchcraft.... They will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house, Thomas
Putnam replies, Mr. Parris, I have taken your part in all contention here, and I would
continue. Putnam is the minister's ally, and as such has power over him. Putnam will use
his power to get his way in this matter, as we shall see.
Goody Putnam then explains how she knows this is witchcraft. Last night she sent Ruth to
Tituba to contact the spirits of Ruth's seven baby brothers and sisters, all of whom had
died--murdered, according to their mother--before they were a day old.
It is a formidable sin to conjure up the dead! Parris cries, and turns in horror to
Abigail. Of course, she had nothing to do with conjuring spirits: Not I, sir--Tituba and
Ruth. Once again, all Parris can think of is himself: Oh, Abigail, what proper payment
for my charity! Now I am undone. But Thomas Putnam has a plan. If Parris will quit
dithering and take charge of the situation, he will not be undone. Let you strike out
against the Devil, and the village will bless you for it! Parris, swayed by this
argument--which not only makes sense, but also flatters his self-important image of
himself--goes down to the parlor with the Putnams to lead the people in a psalm.
I said that Putnam's argument made sense, and it does, but only if you accept the premise
that Betty and Ruth are in fact witched. And this has not yet been proven even to
Parris's satisfaction. But Putnam puts it to him in such a way that the only thing Parris
can do to save himself is to Wait for no one to charge you--declare it [witchcraft]
yourself. And Parris, being who he is, has to go along. Whatever his doubts, whatever his
fears, his actions say, This is witchcraft.
NOTE: Every act is studded with such moments, seemingly innocent or unavoidable decisions
that determine the direction of future events. Here Parris takes the first small step
toward the horror that will follow.
And a word here about proof. It is the most troublesome issue in the play: how do you
prove witchcraft? Everyone seems to have a different answer. Look at Goody Putnam's
speech, They were murdered, Mr. Parris! And mark this proof! Mark it! Last night my Ruth
were ever so little close to their little spirits; I know it, sir. For how else is she
struck dumb now except some power of darkness would stop her mouth? It is a marvelous
sign, Mr. Parris! Later on Reverend Hale, the expert on witchcraft, will say, We cannot
look to superstition in this. The Devil is precise. But the question of what constitutes
proof of witchcraft and what is mere superstition is never resolved in the play, and
Arthur Miller is almost totally silent about it. So we too will have to reserve judgment,
and just take note of these proofs as they are presented.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT I, SCENE 3
Just before they leave, the Putnams' maidservant Mercy Lewis comes in with further word
on Ruth's condition: She give a powerful sneeze... another like it will shake her wits
together, I'm sure. This sounds like good news, and for a moment it looks as if the
trouble might clear up by itself.
As soon as the grownups are gone, Abigail becomes all business. They've got to get their
stories straight: they're in trouble for sure, but if they're careful they can keep it
from getting worse. Mary Warren, the Proctor's maidservant, runs in in a panic, ready to
blab everything. Mercy and Abigail close in on her menacingly, when suddenly little Betty
wakes up. Abigail tries to soothe her, but Betty streaks for the window, crying out for
her dead mama. And at last we find out what Abigail was really up to last night. You
drank blood, Abby! Betty cries. You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! Abigail
smashes her across the face to shut her up, and makes a naked threat to the other two:
Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word... and I will come to you in the
black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you.
And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next
to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had
never seen the sun go down!
If any shred of innocence has clung to Abigail up until this point, it now is vaporized.
It's possible she's just scared and is trying to scare the others into keeping quiet.
It's also possible she drank the charm against Goody Proctor for sport. But even if
that's true, it's pretty nasty sport. Whether you believe she means her threat or not,
it's clear that Abigail Williams is a dangerous person. In fact, if anybody in the play
talks like a witch, it's Abigail. Soon she'll do far worse.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT I, SCENE 4
John Proctor enters, looking for Mary Warren. His appearance startles the girls, and Mary
and Mercy Lewis quickly scurry out. Betty has relapsed into lifelessness, so Proctor and
Abigail are in effect alone. At once we are aware that these two know each other well,
perhaps better than they should. They speak with an easy familiarity, and smile as if
they share a secret. He's heard rumors of witchcraft in the town. Oh, posh! Abigail
replies. We were dancin' in the woods last night, and my uncle leaped in on us. She
[Betty] took fright, is all. How many faces does this Abigail have? We've now heard three
different versions of her story; which one are we to believe? Proctor seems to know: his
smile widens as he says, Ah, you're wicked yet, aren't y'! You'll be clapped in the
stocks before you're twenty.
But Abigail wants more from him than casual banter. Give me a word, John. A soft word.
His answer, No, no, Abby. That's done with, tells us that the rumor is true, something
did happen to cause Goody Proctor to put Abigail out of the house. But for Abby it's
definitely not done with. For the rest of the scene she tries to get Proctor to admit he
still loves her. And although he keeps repeating that it's over between them, he never
actually says, I don't love you any more.
Suddenly, a whole new dimension of the play opens up. Before this scene, the situation
has looked like not much more than a prank that backfired. The girls were just letting
off steam, and the adults are taking the whole thing too seriously. Indeed, when Rebecca
Nurse enters a few moments later, that is her explanation for the whole affair. For the
rest of the girls this may be true, but for Abigail there's more at stake. We have seen
the dark passion that flows between her and John Proctor, and we know her too well by now
to believe that she'll let this thing rest. Not if she can use it to get what she wants.
NOTE: What is this heat between Abigail and Proctor? Is it true love, or is it just the
lust of the flesh? Or maybe some of both? At this point it's hard to tell. Abigail
remembers how you clutched my back behind your house and sweated like a stallion whenever
I come near! This sure sounds like lust. But later, in tears, she pleads with him: I look
for John Proctor who took me from my sleep and put knowledge in my heart! I never knew
what pretense Salem was, I never knew the lying lessons I was taught by all these
Christian women and their covenanted men! And now you bid me tear the light out of my
eyes? I will not, I cannot! You loved me, John Proctor, and whatever sin it is, you love
me yet! John, pity me, pity me! The earnestness of such a speech is hard to doubt.
As for Proctor, we hardly know him yet, but compared to the others we have met so far, he
seems the opposite: honest, even when it hurts him; determined to do the right thing,
even though it makes him and others suffer. We will have more of a chance to examine his
heart later, for he will soon emerge as the hero of this tragedy. For the moment,
however, let's just take note of how intense their feelings are for each other, and watch
for further developments.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT I, SCENE 5
A psalm is being sung below, and suddenly Betty starts screaming. Her father rushes in,
followed by the Putnams, Rebecca Nurse, and an old farmer named Giles Corey. Parris is
terrified: it seems as if Betty cannot bear to hear the Lord's name. The rest look on
with curiosity, all of them believing this to be a prodigious sign that witchcraft is
afoot. All except Rebecca Nurse. She goes over and merely stands beside the bed, which
miraculously calms Betty down. Once again it seems as if the whole thing might just blow
over, and for a moment everything is calm.
But the Putnams are not convinced by Rebecca's soothing explanations. They don't believe
it's God's will that all Rebecca's children should survive, while all of their own wither
on the night of their birth. John Proctor sides with Rebecca, and wants to know why
Parris sent for Reverend Hale before calling a town meeting. At this point, a full-blown
squabble breaks out, and we get to see at first hand the contention in the town that
Reverend Parris complained about in the first scene. Proctor won't come to church because
Parris hardly mentions God anymore. Parris wants the congregation to give him money for
firewood, as well as a deed to his house. And everybody argues over who owns what land.
NOTE: As we saw in The Author and His Times section of this guide, land was already a
sore point with the Puritans of Salem. Arthur Miller brings it up here because it will
play such a horrible part in the nightmare to come. We will find out that Thomas Putnam
in particular stands to gain quite a bit by having his neighbors cried out as witches.
And we will also see Giles Corey, who seems like such a comical character now, go to
incredible lengths to keep his land from being taken from him. The question of witchcraft
will be inseparable from the question of land ownership from beginning to end.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT I, SCENE 6
Into this melee comes Reverend John Hale, loaded down with half a dozen heavy books.
NOTE: The books may seem to be just a device, a nice touch to round out Reverend Hale's
character, like a pair of glasses, or ink on his hands. But in a way the books are more
important than the man who carries them. Reverend Hale is an expert on witchcraft, but
his expertise comes from the books. They are heavy, weighted with authority. Without
them, Reverend Hale would be no better than the others, a man with an opinion. If the
others look to him for answers, he looks to the books. It is on the books' authority that
the witches will later be hanged.
But before he can begin even to find out if there are witches in this case, a disturbing
thing happens. John Proctor, who knows the girls were only fooling around (he doesn't
seem to have heard about the charm to kill his wife), leaves. Maybe he's giving up on
what he sees as the foolishness of his neighbors, maybe he believes Reverend Hale will
talk some sense into them. Shortly afterward, Rebecca Nurse follows Proctor out, saying
she is too old for this. She doesn't believe there is witchcraft here, and she also seems
to be afraid that Reverend Hale's being here is a bad idea. There is no one left in the
room who doubts the existence of witchcraft. Except maybe Abigail, but she is, as we have
seen, a special case.
What follows is the logical result of removing the only really reasonable people from the
scene. Had they stayed, they would certainly have hampered Mr. Hale's work, and the
momentum that carries the town into witch madness might never have built up. To use the
analogy of a tug-of-war, they let go of the rope.
Since the opening of the play we have been prepared for this moment; we have seen it
coming. We expect to see some witchcraft. And Arthur Miller does not disappoint us.
The people in the room are all breathless, waiting for Mr. Hale and his books to work
their magic. They all know that what takes place in the next few moments will probably
change their lives. Even if he comes up with nothing, as he warns them might happen, and
finds no bruise of hell on Betty, at least they will have witnessed a prodigious
demonstration of deep learning.
But Hale has given them reason to hope for something more spectacular. This man has
acquaintance with all familiar spirits--your incubi and succubi; your witches that go by
land, by air, and by sea; your wizards of the night and of the day. He has promised that
If [Betty] is truly in the Devil's grip we may have to rip and tear to get her free. And
as he is about to start, he warns them solemnly; Now mark me, if the Devil is in her you
will witness some frightful wonders in this room, so please keep your wits about you. Mr.
Putnam, stand close in case she flies. Given the charged atmosphere in the room, if the
Devil himself came up through the floor, it would hardly be unexpected. What Mr. Hale has
in fact done is made it impossible for something not to happen.
He tries talking to Betty. Nothing. He asks if someone afflicts her, or some thing--a
pig, a mouse, or any beast at all. Nothing. He intones Latin over her: In the name of the
Father and the Son, I bid you [who are afflicting this child] return to Hell! Nothing. He
turns to Abigail. She squirms beneath his questions. Yes, they were dancing. Yes, there
was a kettle of soup, but the live frog jumped in, we never put it in! Hale is on the
scent now, and he bears down on her. Did you call the Devil last night?
Abigail has to get out of this. I never called him! Tituba, Tituba... and we're off. Now
Abigail can confess everything because Tituba made her do it: made her drink blood, made
her laugh at prayer, made her dream corruptions and stand in the open doorway and not a
stitch upon my body! What answer can poor Tituba make to such a deluge of accusations? No
I didn't? Who's going to believe that? On the contrary, the witch has been found.
Tituba's in a terrible jam. When she denies the charge that she compacted with the Devil,
her master threatens to whip her to death, and Mr. Putnam adds that she must be hanged if
she will not confess. Very well, she'll confess. If you had to choose between a noose and
a false confession, which would you choose? (Remember your answer for later.)
But to Tituba, it may not have been such a lie. The Devil is real to these people. If
they haven't seen him in the flesh, he is an active figure in their imaginations. He is
the Author of all Temptations, the Father of Lies. And so, if a good Christian sins, it
must be because, in some way, the Devil made him do it.
The point here is that Hale and the others lead Tituba into her confession by giving her
nowhere else to turn. And once she starts, the emotion of releasing pent-up guilt and
anger is so powerful that it sucks Abigail and then Betty into its vortex. Witchcraft has
been revealed.
NOTE: But is the witchcraft real? Or are the girls and Tituba pretending, as Mary Warren
will later say? Modern psychology explains what happened in Salem in 1692 as a case of
mass hysteria. Hysteria often occurs when a person can't or won't express powerful
emotions--rage, say, or fear--which then find an outlet in bizarre forms of behavior:
outbursts of laughter or fits of weeping for no apparent reason, paralysis of the limbs
for which no physical cause can be found, sometimes dancing or trying to fly. And
hysteria can be contagious, especially in communities with strongly shared values and
strict codes of conduct. To those who catch it, the affliction is completely real, they
simply cannot control themselves.
But is hysteria the case here? Let's look at two striking moments in this climactic scene
to see if we can get a clue. The first happens during Tituba's confession. Hale and
Parris are pressing her for the names of the people she's seen with the Devil. Instead of
giving these names right away, she bursts out, in a fury:
He say Mr. Parris must be kill!... Mr. Parris mean man and no gentle man, and he bid me
rise out of my bed and cut your throat!
This is a violent non sequitur and, as such things often do, it tells us a lot of what
Tituba really feels about her master.
There are three possible explanations for this outburst: 1) Tituba is being sly--she
hates her master and sees this as a chance to get back at him; 2) Tituba has fantasized
killing Parris, especially when he mistreated her, but she can't admit this to herself
and blames it on the Devil; 3) The Devil actually came to her as she says, that is,
Tituba, who has a vivid imagination, really believes what she's saying. The author leaves
the choice up to us. What is clear is that all the people in the room take Tituba's
statements as fact.
All of them, that is, with the possible exception of Abigail Williams. Throughout
Tituba's confession Abby has remained silent. Suddenly she rises, staring as though
inspired, and cries out:
I want to open myself! I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced
for the Devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw
Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with
the Devil!
What are we to make of this? In this case we have a lot more to go on than we did with
Tituba. Abigail's been on stage since the beginning of the act; by now we know her better
than anyone else. We've seen her change her story for each new person she's told it to,
we've seen her consistently shift blame onto others, we've heard her threaten the other
girls with a pointy reckoning, and we know she hates Goody Proctor. It's doubtful that
she actually saw the Devil: earlier, when Proctor said the town's mumbling witchcraft,
her response was a contemptuous, Oh, posh!
But throughout this scene Tituba's been getting all the attention, and maybe Abigail just
wants a little for herself. Like a child trying for the grownups' approval, she pipes up,
I did it too! I did it too!
Her long silence during Tituba's confession may, however, have a more sinister
explanation. She knows now what pretense Salem is, and she sees a chance to pay back the
hypocrisy of all these Christian women and their covenanted men with a monstrous trick.
Tituba just got away with a vicious attack on her uncle; might not Abigail be able to do
the same with her enemies? All she has to do is confess and anything she says will be
believed. The temptation for revenge is too irresistible.
But let's not get carried away in making Abigail the villain of this piece. Remember the
atmosphere in the room, remember how frightened they all are. Tituba has just been
released from a crushing burden of guilt. Abigail, too, has sinned, and she knows it.
Whatever she does later, at this moment she may long fervently for the light of God and
the sweet love of Jesus.
However you interpret Abigail's confession, it does bring Betty back to life. Hale is
jubilant: Glory to God! It is broken, they are free! As Putnam rushes out to summon the
marshal, Hale shouts above the din, Let the marshal bring irons!
The madness has begun.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 1
Act I began in a state of tense anxiety, and built steadily to an orgy of excitement. Act
II, by contrast, opens with air of tranquil domesticity. It is dusk, and upstairs a woman
is singing a lullaby to her children. The kitchen fire spreads its soft light about the
darkening room, and above the embers hangs an iron pot of bubbling stew.
Into this peaceful scene comes John Proctor, home after working all day in his fields.
The children are going to sleep, and Elizabeth Proctor, now comes down to serve up her
husband's supper. This could be any time in history, any place in the world. The Proctors
could be any mother and father relaxing at last together at the end of a long day. They
make small talk about the boys, about the farm. Nothing could be more normal.
Only the slightest hints of trouble disturb this placid picture: Elizabeth's stew lacks
flavor, John kisses her but she doesn't respond very warmly, she forgets to give him
cider to go with his meal; there are no flowers in the house. These little things may
seem unimportant, but we notice them. We already know this marriage hasn't been
perfect--John Proctor did have an affair with Abigail Williams. Maybe he had a reason.
Twice in Act I Abby said Elizabeth is a cold, sniveling woman. Could there be some truth
in this description? Now the woman herself is before us. Let's see what she's like.
Her first words are, What keeps you so late? Maybe she's only worried that something
happened to him. He wanted to finish seeding the farm, he replies, and this seems to
satisfy her for the moment. But if she has more on her mind, his lateness will come up
again.
For the next few minutes John tries everything he can think of to get her to warm up
toward him, but the only time she smiles is when he says the stew is well seasoned (and
we know it wasn't). Finally, he has to know what's wrong: I think you're sad again. Are
you? Sure enough, she's still bothered by his being late. The rest of the scene will
bring out everything that makes this marriage so shaky.
NOTE: The Abigail-Proctor-Elizabeth triangle is perhaps the most important subplot of the
play, because it's these three people that we follow most closely through the next three
acts. But the main story is the development of witch madness in Salem, and we cannot be
allowed to forget it for long.
Here we see Arthur Miller's ingenuity with exposition, often the hardest thing a
playwright has to do. He must tell us what's happened offstage or in the past, things we
need to know in order to understand what happens onstage. Eight days have passed since
the end of Act I, and somehow we need to know all that has happened in the meantime. But
Miller can't be too obvious or clumsy. The worst kind of exposition is to have one
character say to another, As you know, the following things happened in the last eight
days.... He might be able to make it a little less awkward by changing the line to, Did
you hear what happened in the last eight days? but the audience will still recognize what
he's doing and say, Oh, here comes the exposition.
What Miller does instead is get us thinking about something else entirely, in this case,
what's wrong between John and Elizabeth Proctor. And part of what's wrong is that John's
been to Salem once already, and there he saw Abigail. Elizabeth must be wondering if it
really is over between her husband and this girl; maybe he went to see her again and
that's why he was late. What she's really worried about is John still loves Abigail, but
Elizabeth doesn't yet have a good reason to accuse him of this directly. Besides, John
hasn't been to town in more than a week. But Mary Warren has, and the stories she brings
back are hard to believe. Elizabeth is carefully working up something as she tells John
about the court, the judges, the fourteen people already in jail, the talk of hanging.
Who's the cause of this madness? Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and where
she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel.
You see what's happened? While we're waiting for Elizabeth to spring the name of Abigail,
Arthur Miller has slipped the exposition in by the side door, as it were.
Elizabeth puts her husband to a test: he must go to town and tell them this witchcraft
business is a fraud. Of course he hesitates, afraid no one will believe him. But
Elizabeth doesn't see it that way: John, if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt,
would you falter now? I think not.
Now its out. But Proctor's fed up with her suspicion and her coldness, and tells her
bluntly, Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband any
more.... Learn charity, woman.
Suppose you've done something you're ashamed of, something that badly hurt a person you
love very much. You can say that you're sorry and you'll never do it again, and you'll
try everything you can think of to make up for it. Of course you know things may never be
the same again, but when months go by and the person you hurt still hasn't forgiven you,
it's understandable that you'd begin to resent it. This is how John Proctor feels.
It's easy to sympathize with him in this scene. He did wrong, but he confessed it, and
Abigail was put out. And he has gone tiptoe in this house all seven month since she is
gone. But still an everlasting funeral marches round [Elizabeth's] heart. Nobody's
perfect, and enough's enough.
Let's not forget, though, that the last time we saw Proctor, he was with Abigail, and he
admitted looking up at her window and that he still may think about her softly from time
to time. And he did not say, I don't love you anymore. This is the real issue to
Elizabeth--not the wrong he did before or the right he's trying to do now, but how he
still feels in his heart about Abigail. We know she's got good reason to worry.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 2
Before this issue can be brought completely out in the open, Mary Warren comes home from
court. This scene does several important things: 1) it interrupts John and Elizabeth's
argument just when it was coming to a head, keeping us in suspense until they can resume;
2) it brings us new information about the trials and what happens in court; and 3) the
poppet Mary gives to Elizabeth sets up the proof that will lead to Elizabeth's arrest at
the end of the act.
NOTE: Of these three things, Mary's descriptions of the trials is most crucial, for now
we see how the witchcraft works. A person is cried out for a witch and is arrested and
brought into court. We've already seen Hale go to work on Tituba, so we know what court
examinations are like--denials are useless. But Mary's story adds a new wrinkle:
...she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbin' up my back,
and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot
breathe air; and then I hear a voice, a screamin' voice, and it were my voice....
The witch has sent her spirit out to torment the girls who have accused her. This will
turn out to be the most damning evidence against an accused witch. It sounds crazy to us
today (as it did to Proctor and some others at the time), but the judges had good reason
for putting so much stock in spectral evidence, as they called it. Listen to Deputy
Governor Danforth, in Act III:
In an ordinary crime, how does one defend the accused? One calls up witnesses to prove
his innocence. But witchcraft is ipso facto, on its face and by its nature, an invisible
crime, is it not? Therefore, who may possibly be witness to it? The witch and the victim.
None other. Now we cannot hope the witch will accuse herself; granted? Therefore, we must
rely upon her victims--and they do testify, the children certainly do testify.
The only way to refute such logic is to deny the existence of witchcraft. But then you're
left with the question, What is tormenting these children? And for that, no one has an
answer.
Mary also tells the Proctors that Goody Osburn will hang, but that Sarah Good will not,
because she confessed. This is extremely important--the last act of the play revolves
around this legal procedure. A bit later in this act, Proctor will say to Reverend Hale,
There are them that will swear to anything before they'll hang; have you never thought of
that? It's a question that will come to haunt him later, when the noose is threatening
his own neck. It is already beginning to haunt Reverend Hale, as we will find out. Hale
hasn't come in yet, but let's remember this question when he does.
John Proctor's having enough trouble in his own house without worrying about the nonsense
going on in the town. And now this serving girl refuses to stay at home as he commanded
her to do. It's the last straw, and he goes for his whip. But Mary's an official of the
court now, she says, and she'll not stand whipping any more. Besides, she saved
Elizabeth's life today by saying she never saw any sign of witchcraft about the house.
The whip comes down unused, and Mary Warren goes to bed.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 3
This last revelation casts a whole new light on John's relationship with Abigail. The
scene that follows is the most intense confrontation between two people in the play. They
no longer have time for fooling around; if John and Elizabeth must settle with each
other, it's now or never.
The danger is clear to both of them: Abigail means to cry out Elizabeth for a witch. What
are they going to do? Proctor says be will go to the court and tell them what Abigail
said to him. But Elizabeth is a woman, and she understands Abigail better than John does:
Abigail thinks she still has a chance with John, if only Elizabeth can be removed. So
John must go to Abigail and call her a whore, kill any hope she might have of ever
getting him for herself. He agrees, but it makes him mad. He says, it speaks deceit, and
I am honest!
What does he mean by deceit? That he still loves Abigail, and that calling her a whore
will be a lie? Or that he thinks this is a cheap trick? He doesn't explain. He goes back
to his old complaint about Elizabeth: I see now your spirit twists around the single
error of my life, and I will never tear it free!
But Elizabeth knows what to think:
You'll tear it free--when you come to know that I will be your only wife, or no wife at
all! She has an arrow in you yet, John Proctor, and you know it well!
NOTE: The Puritans' views on sex were not so puritanical as we usually imagine. Sexual
intercourse between married persons was not only encouraged, it was required by law. If a
husband proved impotent, his wife could have the marriage annulled. If the wife refused
sex to her husband, this was considered neglect of duty and could be used as grounds for
divorce. God had commanded his people to be fruitful and multiply, and the Puritans took
this commandment seriously.
Today we call sexual intercourse making love, or sleeping with. To the Puritans, a man
and woman who had intercourse were made one flesh. If you were married, it was your duty
to be made one flesh with your spouse. But if you were made one flesh with someone other
than your spouse, this was adultery. And adultery, like witchcraft, was a capital
offense. Elizabeth Proctor must love her husband very much to keep his secret. Later we
will see how much Proctor loves Elizabeth--he is willing to confess to adultery in order
to save her.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 4
Reverend Hale comes in on a curious errand: to put some questions as to the Christian
character of this house, if you'll permit me. How changed he is from when we saw him
last! Then he was bold and confident; now he seems tentative, almost shy. He is obviously
troubled by the developments of the last few days. He, too, like Mary Warren, is an
official of the court. But she is merely a witness. He is a judge. His signature is on
Goody Osburn's death warrant. But he's a stranger to these people, and things are
beginning to move too fast for him.
Keep your eye on Hale. In a way he's our stand-in or proxy--we, too, are strangers in
this town. His reactions will be much the same as ours would be if we were in his shoes.
Hale loves the truth more than anything in the world. This love made him a scholar in the
first place. It has also sharpened his sense of what's not true. And he's begun to feel
uneasy about what's happening in Salem. It's just a feeling, and a vague one at that, but
before he signs another death warrant he wants to know whom he's sending to the gallows.
We already know Proctor doesn't think much of Salem's minister, Samuel Parris. But church
attendance is compulsory by law, and if Proctor's youngest son dies unbaptized, he will
go straight to hell. Hale has a right to be worried about this softness in John Proctor's
record.
Worse yet, Proctor cannot recite the Ten Commandments. Remember Mary Warren telling us
that Sarah Good couldn't do it either. And Sarah Good's been proved a witch, first by
sending her spirit out in open court, later by confession. Proctor does a little
better--he gets all but one, the seventh: Thou shalt not commit adultery. This is a
serious failing, because the Puritans believed that all of God's laws are summarized in
the Ten Commandments.
You've probably had the experience of blanking out on a test. You know the answer, it's
on the tip of your tongue, but no matter how hard you try to think of it, it just won't
come. Hale seems to realize that this may be the case here; he decides to let it pass,
even though he has misgivings.
Proctor then tells him what Abigail said, that the children's sickness had naught to do
with witchcraft. Hale is shocked, and wants to know why Proctor has kept this information
back. The answer Hale gets alarms him more than anything he's heard tonight. Proctor
doubts the existence of witches, and Elizabeth agrees with him. Witchcraft is Hale's
specialty, remember, and he knows that the first thing a witch will say is not, I am no
witch, but There's no such thing as a witch.
Notice two things in this passage. The first I've already mentioned, the fact that some
will swear to anything before they'll hang, and Hale knows Proctor's right in saying
this. The second thing occurs when Proctor assures Hale that Elizabeth is incapable of
lying. Abigail, in Act I, repeatedly called Elizabeth a liar. But Abigail, as we've seen,
is a liar herself. On the other hand, Proctor, in Act III, will repeat his claim that
Elizabeth cannot tell a lie, and it will ruin them both. Arthur Miller is here preparing
us for that catastrophe.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 5
Things begin to happen very quickly. Giles Corey and Francis Nurse come in; their wives
have been arrested. In one very short scene we find out that: 1) No one is safe, if these
two godly women can be accused; and 2) The accusers are seeking revenge--on Rebecca Nurse
for murdering Goody Putnam's babies, and on Martha Corey for murdering Walcott's pigs.
These two facts can add up to only one thing: Elizabeth Proctor is next.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 6
Sure enough, Ezekiel Cheever, clerk of the Court, appears at the door, followed by
Marshal Herrick. The trap has been sprung on Elizabeth. The poppet Mary Warren made out
of boredom, to fill the long hours of sitting in court, and then gave to Elizabeth to
make up for being so long away from home, is now the hard proof that Elizabeth is a
witch. It's ludicrous that a doll would cause a woman to hang. What signifies a poppet?,
everyone wants to know.
NOTE: Dolls, teddy bears, and the like play a large part in the lives of most young
children. You probably had one yourself, and remember playing games and having elaborate
conversations with it. Puritan children were no different from other children in having
dolls to play with. Poppets were not in themselves anything to worry about, or else how
could Mary Warren make one in full view of the judges and the court?
But in one respect a poppet was suspicious. A child could have a poppet, but a grownup
keeping one was unnatural. Witches were widely believed to make images of their victims
in order to torment them from a distance. The witch would stick a needle or thorn into
the body of the image, and that part of the victim's body would be wracked with searing
pain. Stick the needle in the image's heart, and the victim was supposed to die.
Why would Abigail dare to do something as outrageous as this? Several answers are
possible: 1) she's gone crazy and doesn't know what she's doing anymore; 2) she's drunk
with the power she's acquired and is seeing how far she can go in leading grownups by the
nose; 3) Elizabeth is right, she'd dare not call out such a farmer's wife but there be
monstrous profit in it. She thinks to take my place.
Hale's position at this moment is critical. He's a figure of authority, not only as a
judge, but as a specialist in witchcraft. If Abigail's trick gets past him, she's likely
to get away with it, and Elizabeth Proctor will hang for being a witch.
We know, as the Proctors know, what Abigail is up to. Whatever her motivation, she stuck
that needle in her belly herself. But how do we know? First, by circumstantial evidence:
we saw Mary Warren give the poppet to Elizabeth just moments before Hale arrived.
Elizabeth hasn't left the room since then, so if she had stuck the needle in the poppet,
we'd have seen her. More important, we know Abigail Williams--what kind of person she is,
what she wants--and we believe she is capable of trying to frame Elizabeth.
Hale is in the dark on both these points. When he entered the Proctors' house for the
first time in his life, that poppet was sitting on the mantelpiece and could have been
there for years for all he knows. As far as he's concerned, Abigail Williams is what he
sees every day in court: a young girl writhing in agony on the floor, suffering so
hideously that it breaks his heart and fills him with rage against her tormentors.
For all his learning and keen intelligence, the Reverend John Hale also has a tender
heart, and it is this, if anything, that makes him falter now. It's hard for him to
believe that women of such spotless reputation as Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey could be
witches. It means, as he says, that nothing's left to stop the whole green world from
burning. But he can't discount the possibility. He's seen too many wonders in court.
And the alternative is appalling. To believe Proctor is to charge a cold and cruel murder
on Abigail. This is why, when Mary Warren tells him the real story of the poppet, he asks
her, May it be, perhaps, that someone conjures you even now to say this? It's a
reasonable question; he's seen it happen in court. Mary answers, Why, no, sir, I am
entirely myself, I think, and adds that Abby saw her make the poppet and stick the needle
in. This is troubling information, but Hale is too uncertain of himself among these
strangers; he dare not leap to the conclusion that is so obvious to us.
And so Hale, the intellectual with the soft heart, misses his chance to save the lives of
innocent people. But maybe some of them are not so innocent. Before he leaves, Hale tells
an enraged John Proctor:
...I cannot think God be provoked so grandly by such a petty cause.... Man, we must look
to cause proportionate. Were there murder done, perhaps, and never brought to light?
Abomination? Some secret blasphemy that stinks to Heaven? Think on cause, man, and let
you help me to discover it. For there's your way, believe it, there is your only way,
when such confusion strikes upon the world... think on your village and what may have
drawn from heaven such thundering wrath upon you all.
It's the only thing he can think of to explain what's going on: someone is hiding a sin
so disgusting it has called down God's punishment on the whole community. These words
strike straight into John Proctor's heart.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT II, SCENE 7
Mary Warren is now Proctor's only home to save Elizabeth. He will do anything; he will
sacrifice Mary and himself, but that goodness will not die for me!
There is something almost demonic in the violence of Proctor's rage. Earlier he had
demanded of Hale:
Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God's fingers?
I'll tell you what's walking Salem--vengeance is walking Salem.... I'll not give my wife
to vengeance!
Now he goes to Salem to accuse, to charge a cold and cruel murder on Abigail. Are his
motivations holy? Is there no vengeance in his heart? He seems almost to look forward to
his own destruction, as long as he can bring Abigail down with him: ...her saintliness is
done with. We will slide together into our pit.
But maybe he sees this as a chance finally to get the punishment he feels he deserves for
his sin of adultery; a punishment Elizabeth denied him by keeping his secret. If this is
the case, it could be relief he's expressing when he says,
Peace. It is a providence [blessing], and no great chance; we are only what we always
were, but naked now.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 1
Act III is a courtroom drama. We've been hearing a lot about this court; now we will see
it in action. Arthur Miller has prepared us for the coming battle between the
witch-hunters and their victims. We now know all the principal characters, where they
stand and what they want. All the subplots have been laid out: 1) Parris and the faction
bent on ousting him; 2) Thomas Putnam's greed for more land; 3) Ann Putnam's poisonous
envy of Rebecca Nurse; 4) Hale's struggle with his conscience; 5) Abigail's deceitfulness
and her designs on John Proctor, 6) The trouble in the Proctors' marriage; and 7) Mary
Warren's dilemma of being caught in the crossfire. The outcome of all these plots will be
decided in this act. As Mr. Hale once said, You will witness some frightful wonders in
this room, so please keep your wits about you. But everything's so complicated, how can
we do that?
NOTE: A courtroom drama is a lot like a football game. First of all, there are
regulations: things nobody can do, things certain players can do but others can't,
penalties for breaking these rules. There are yard lines, out-of-bounds lines, and goal
lines. When the ball is snapped, everybody takes off in a different direction. If you've
never seen a football game before, it must look like utter chaos. But at the end of each
play, the ball is usually in a different place, and you can tell which way and how far
it's been moved.
It's hard to watch a game and not take sides. You don't watch a game just to see who
wins, but to see if your team will win. And you want your team to win; you cheer when it
does well, and your heart sinks when the other team does better.
The longer you watch, the more you learn about the rules, almost without knowing it. Of
course you want to know how well your team is playing, but you also become interested in
how they're playing (What plays are they running? Is the other team playing fair?).
A courtroom drama works in much the same way. In the first place, there are two
sides--prosecution and defense--and only one side can win. Usually we've already taken a
side before the trial itself starts. Because we care which side wins, we follow each
argument closely, look for loopholes, and try to anticipate how the case will unfold.
In Act III we have on one side the victims of the witch-hunt, represented by John
Proctor. On the other we have the witch-hunters themselves. The difference between this
courtroom drama and most others is that the court itself is one of the contestants. The
court, in effect, is the witch-hunt. Without it there would be no arrests, no jailings,
no trials, no convictions, no hangings.
If John Proctor loses his case, he and all the people who support him will be destroyed.
Reverend Parris repeatedly accuses Proctor and his followers of trying to overthrow the
court. We may not like Parris very much, but here he's telling the truth. For Proctor to
save himself and his friends, he has to convince the court that everything it has done so
far is wrong. And if the court is wrong, then a lot of people have suffered--and some
have been put to death--for nothing. If Proctor wins, all belief in the court will be
destroyed, and the judges themselves could be charged with murder.
The odds against Proctor are overwhelming, but there is reason for hope. First of all,
Proctor has the truth on his side. Abigail actually told him there was no witchcraft
involved. We also know that Proctor is willing to risk everything--his good name, even
his life--to bring this truth out. Second, Deputy Governor Danforth, for all his
sternness, is an intelligent and just man. He will give Proctor a fair hearing, even
though it may mean the total overthrow of the court.
Some say that the outcome of this act depends on the answer to the question, What kind of
man is John Proctor? Before Danforth can decide on the charges, he must know the man who
brings them. If you interpret it this way, then the action of this act consists of an
examination of John Proctor's character. Each event or argument is then evidence that
supports one of two opposing positions: 1) John Proctor is a good man, and is therefore
telling the truth; or 2) John Proctor is an agent of the Father of Lies, so naturally
he's lying.
During the examinations, Danforth takes Proctor seriously at every point. He has to,
Proctor's charges go right to the heart of what is most important here: justice. Danforth
wavers only when Abigail and the girls go into their torments. He is clearly frightened
by these girls, but he manages to keep his head until Mary Warren defects to Abigail's
side. Then Danforth turns to Proctor and demands, What are you? You are combined with
anti-Christ.
This last point about Mary Warren hints at another way of looking at Act III. In 1692, a
farmer like John Proctor would most likely have a cart for carrying things around. Each
wheel on the cart would be held in place by a linchpin, which was stuck through a hole in
the axle on the outside of the wheel. Under normal circumstances a linchpin doesn't have
much work to do. It just has to keep the wheel, as it turns, from walking off the end of
the axle. But if the wheel goes over too many bumps, the linchpin can loosen and fall
out. It can also be sheared off, if too much pressure is put on it.
According to this interpretation, Mary Warren is the linchpin of Act III. She cannot
withstand the pressure that is put on her--from Proctor on one side, Abigail on the
other, and hard questioning by the judges in the middle. It's difficult to imagine anyone
not breaking under the strain.
NOTE: The setting of this act is curious. If this is a courtroom drama, why are we not in
the courtroom? But remember that the court itself is on trial. When the court is in full
session, with the jury and the whole town looking on, the judges at the bench have
absolute power. Giles Corey tries to present his evidence in open court, and gets himself
thrown out for disrupting procedure. Perhaps Arthur Miller wants to give the victims a
better chance at being heard. He sets this act in the vestry rooms of the meetinghouse,
where the judges will be less protected by the trappings of authority.
The first three French scenes of Act III set the stage for the battle that will follow.
In Scene I we hear Martha Corey's trial in progress offstage.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 2
Scene 2, which begins when Giles Corey is forced out of the courtroom onto the stage,
does two things: 1) it lets us know where we are: This is the highest court of the
supreme government of this province; and 2) it introduces two new characters, Judge
Hathorne and Deputy Governor Danforth. Danforth quickly establishes that he's the boss.
Everyone is arguing--he settles the argument. He will consider Giles' evidence, but only
if Giles follows procedure: Let him submit his evidence in proper affidavit [in
writing].
This scene also brings out an aspect of the witch-hunt that we've seen before. The most
innocent actions can have disastrous consequences: I only said she were readin' books,
sir, and they come and take her out of my house, Giles says, weeping. Giles seems
confused. He told Proctor that Martha was arrested for putting a curse on Walcott's pigs.
And Danforth obviously knows nothing about Martha Corey and her books.
But really Giles is upset because he broke charity with the woman. He feels he has
betrayed her, and he wants to make up for it. In a way this parallels Proctor's situation
with his wife. By committing adultery with Abigail, John certainly broke charity with
Elizabeth. Both Proctor and Giles Corey are motivated, to some extent, by guilt. This
will be extremely important later.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 3
Francis Nurse, the focus of Scene 3, has done nothing to feel guilty about. He is given
the job of being the first to tell Danforth that the girls are frauds. Judge Hathorne is
just like Reverend Parris--to him every defense is an attack upon the court, and he wants
both Giles and Francis arrested for contempt. But Danforth is a bigger man than that.
Francis Nurse has a high reputation, and wouldn't make such a charge lightly. He also has
courage: Excellency, I never thought to say it to such a weighty judge, but you are
deceived.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 4
Proctor brings in Mary Warren, the star witness for the defense. A great deal of
maneuvering takes place before Danforth agrees to listen to Mary's story. First John
Proctor must be tested. He brought Mary here, and both Francis Nurse and Giles Corey look
to Proctor to speak for them. Why is Proctor doing this? Danforth wants to know. Just to
save his wife? Apparently not, because Proctor won't drop the charge even after he finds
out Elizabeth is pregnant and is therefore safe for a year or more. And his charge is
shocking: the children are lying. If this charge is true, it will mean that seventy-two
people have been condemned to hang on the basis of lies. This will undermine the
authority of the court, and Danforth will be lucky to escape Salem with his life. So he
must be absolutely certain Proctor is to be taken seriously.
Once he is convinced of Proctor's sincerity, Danforth proceeds to investigate the charge
without hesitating. Considering what he has at stake, this is courageous.
Proctor has built his case carefully. He has prepared three depositions, or written
statements, which he hopes will win the court over. This shows good strategy: if the
first deposition has little effect, bring in the second; if that's still not enough,
bring in the third.
The first statement backfires; everyone who signed it will now be arrested. The second
fares worse: Giles Corey accuses Thomas Putnam of reaching out for land. Putnam is
brought in, and of course denies it. Giles, seeing what happened to the people who signed
the first petition, refuses to reveal the source of his information. And then he makes
matters worse by trying to catch Danforth in a legal technicality. This angers the deputy
governor, who declares the court in full session. Now all that's left between the victims
and disaster is the third deposition, Mary Warren's.
But before Mary's ordeal begins, let's check up on Reverend Hale. Remember he's our
proxy, he stands in for us in this play. You'll recall how much he changed in the week
between Act I and Act II. Another week has passed; has Hale changed still further? In one
way he is still the same. When anyone gets excited, Hale's the first one to try to calm
things down. But now there's an added note of desperation in his pleas for peace, as if
he's afraid he himself might be losing control. Notice what he's saying. In Act II he
defended the court against the outrage of the farmers. Now he's defending the farmers
against the sternness of the judges. He supports Giles Corey's outburst; he protests that
every defense is not an attack upon the court; he tries to excuse Giles' silence by
saying there is a prodigious fear of this court in the country; and he thinks Proctor's
weighty claim should be argued by a lawyer.
In all of these attempts he is brushed aside. Perhaps this explains his desperation: he
sees this situation drifting toward disaster, and he is losing--or has already lost--his
power to stop it.
Now for Mary Warren. Proctor has no doubt coached her in what to say. We know she is
afraid of him, we have seen him threaten her. But he knows that threats alone won't
stiffen Mary against the gruelling trial she will have to face. He has encouraged her as
well. He tells her a Bible story in which an angel watches over a little boy who also
faces a dangerous task. He reminds her of all the good people who are behind her all the
way. He has even set up their plea so that Francis Nurse and Giles Corey will go up
against the court first; these men will surely convince the judges that Mary should be
given a sympathetic hearing. And behind all this moral support is the rock wall of the
truth. If all else fails, Proctor must have told her, she has truth on her side. Because
God damns all liars, Abigail and the other girls are going straight to hell. Mary may
even be able to save her friends from eternal torment, by breaking up this conspiracy of
lies.
But in the end, as Mary well knows, everything will depend on whether or not the judges
believe her story. The weakness of her story is obvious to everyone. She says the girls
are lying. How does she know? Because she used to be one of the group. If we believe her
now, it means she was lying before when she cried out witches with the rest. But if she
was a liar then, how can we believe her now?
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 5
To answer this question, Danforth brings in Abigail, Mercy Lewis, Susanna Walcott, and
Betty Parris. This is horribly unfair--four against one--but in a way there's no
alternative. Somebody's lying here, and the only way to find out who is to face Mary with
those she's accusing.
Even if Proctor's plan had worked and the first two depositions hadn't backfired, the
whole weight of his charge would still rest on the slender shoulders of Mazy Warren. If
Abigail will not confess to lying--and from what we know of her this is unlikely--we'll
have a case of Mary Warren's word against the girls'. And as Danforth says, I have until
this moment not the slightest reason to suspect that the children may be deceiving me.
In all fairness to Danforth, here he is bending over backward to give Proctor's charge
the benefit of the doubt. Much about Proctor is suspicious: his wife's in jail; he
doesn't come to church but plows on Sunday; Mary's obviously been threatened by him, even
though she denies it. And Mary is a confessed liar--that is, if she's telling the truth
now. Despite all these doubts, Danforth turns to the girls and urges them to tell the
truth.
Notice how he speaks to them. All Mary Warren got from him was sharp questions, full of
accusation. To the girls, Danforth's tone is considerate, almost respectful. He tells
them Mary's charge, then lets them know just how suspicious of her he is:
...it may well be that Mary Warren has been conquered by Satan, who sends her here to
distract our sacred purpose. If so, her neck will break for it.
He follows this up with the weak assurance that a quick confession will go easier with
you.
Danforth's unconscious prejudice is not lost on Abigail. He has just told her whom he
wants to believe, so she tells him flatly that Mary is lying.
But Proctor won't let it be settled so easily. What may Mary Warren gain but hard
questioning and worse? he asks, knowing this question is in Danforth's mind as well. Then
Proctor goes on the attack: Abigail is no child, she laughs at prayer, she leads other
girls out to dance naked in the woods. This is all news to Danforth, and he looks at
Abigail with fresh eyes.
But then judge Hathorne, who so far has been kept in the background by Danforth's
superiority, comes up with an ingenious idea. If Mary was only pretending before, let her
pretend now, let her give them all a demonstration of how she deceived the court. Of
course she can't do it. Who could, under such circumstances?
NOTE: Remember the discussion of the girls' fits in Act I. Modern research shows that one
of the best ways to cure mass hysteria is to isolate its victims from one another. This
was actually tried in Salem in 1692: one of the youngest of the afflicted girls was sent
to Beverly, where she stayed with Reverend Hale's wife and two daughters. Within a few
weeks she had calmed down almost completely. Perhaps this is Mary Warren's problem here:
she's been cured by her week away from the other girls. She's lost the sense of it now,
as she says.
Hathorne and Parris think they have won. Mary has failed the test, so she must be lying
now. But Danforth isn't sure. Too much doubt has been cast on Abigail, and Mary's
pathetic explanations somehow ring true to him. So he turns to Abigail again and bids her
search her heart and speak the truth.
But Hathorne's trick has brought Abigail enough time to collect her wits. Once again, as
she did with her uncle in Act I, she dodges the question and attacks Danforth for asking
it, even going so far as to threaten him openly:
Let you beware, Mr. Danforth. Think you to be so mighty that the power of Hell may not
turn your wits? Beware of it!
The irony is that this is precisely what's happening. Abigail Williams, at this very
moment, is turning Danforth's wits toward her destructive purpose.
But she breaks her threat off in midsentence. Maybe she's afraid of going too far, maybe
she just gets a better idea. It is fun twisting Danforth around her little finger, but
Danforth isn't Abigail's real enemy here, Mary Warren is, and Mary Warren must be
destroyed. What better way then to cry her out?
We've heard a lot about the awful torments these poor girls endure in court day after
day. Now we get to see them in action. The important thing here is not what these girls
suffer, but who is being made to suffer. To the judges, these are children. Adults are
strong enough to fend for themselves; but the suffering of children is an outrage.
Danforth cannot conceive that a child could be evil enough or even smart enough to plot
murder. Abigail knows this, and she plays on it. When it begins to look like Proctor
might be opening Danforth's eyes Abigail moves quickly. And the girls, like robots,
follow suit.
They haven't lost the sense of it, as Mary Warren quickly sees. By now the girls are old
hands at being tormented, and can turn it on as easily as a water faucet. They follow
Abigail's lead, each one building on the other's fantasy until they've worked themselves
into a proper torment--cold skin, chattering teeth, shivering from the same icy wind.
The judges' reaction is automatic. They've seen this happen before, they know what it
means. Danforth immediately wheels on Mary Warren:
Mary Warren, do you witch her? I say to you, do you send your spirit out?
It's a brilliant move on Abigail's part, but it almost blows up in her face. Proctor,
seeing Mary's nerve give out, is driven to the wall. In a total rage he leaps at Abigail
and jerks her up by the hair. How do you call heaven! Whore! Whore!
Now it's out, and Proctor's done for. Whether Abigail is exposed or not, Proctor's just
destroyed himself. There's no way he can win. But maybe by unmasking Abigail he can save
his wife and his friends.
Danforth's shining image of Abigail has been tarnished, but this new charge of Proctor's
is too shocking. It must be proved. So Danforth sends for Elizabeth Proctor.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 6
Elizabeth knows nothing of what's happened in the room, but she senses almost immediately
that this is a test. What's going on is not entirely clear to her, except that John's in
trouble and his fate depends on her answers to Danforth's questions. From where we sit,
it's amazing that Elizabeth doesn't see the trap. But remember what she's been through in
the last week: arrested in the middle of the night and hauled off in chains to jail;
tried as a witch, with the girls in full cry throughout the trial; convicted and
sentenced to hang; allowed no contact with the outside world, especially her husband. If
she's exhausted and confused, it's not surprising. And if she's reluctant to even open
her mouth, it's no wonder at all--every word she's said so far in her own defense just
set the girls to howling all the louder.
But even if she has her wits about her, her mistake is easy to understand. She can see
where Danforth's questions are headed, but she doesn't know who talked. John may have
confessed, but isn't it far more likely that Abigail, out of sheer spite, accused John
first?
Whatever Elizabeth's reasoning, she fails the test. She tells Danforth that her husband
is no lecher. As Hale says, it's a natural lie to tell; she thought only to save her
husband's name. But Danforth will have none of it. Proctor claimed that his wife couldn't
tell a lie; very well, Elizabeth has just cleared Abigail. And Proctor's charge against
Abigail was nothing but a last-ditch effort to overthrow the court.
If you think for just a moment, this makes no sense at all. If Proctor is a liar, then
saying that Elizabeth cannot lie could itself be a lie. Elizabeth also denied being a
witch; Danforth obviously thinks this is a lie, or he wouldn't have found her guilty and
sentenced her to hang. Why should he believe her now, when she denies her husband is an
adulterer?
One answer can be found near the end of the previous scene. In a stage direction Arthur
Miller describes Danforth as Himself engaged and entered by Abigail. This means that she
has him somehow hypnotized, and that whatever Elizabeth answers, he'll see it as letting
Abigail off the hook. If Elizabeth says, Yes, Abigail's a whore, it could merely be a
plot by the witch and her husband to discredit the court's chief witness against her.
There's another possibility, that Danforth's wits have been turned, just as Abigail
threatened. If this is the case, then he simply no longer knows what he's doing.
Don't forget that the court has based every one of its decisions solely on the testimony
of Abigail and the girls. If Abigail has been lying, the court is destroyed. Danforth may
be taking any port in the storm to keep his world from collapsing. Proctor cannot prove
his charge, therefore the charge is false. Abigail is vindicated, the court is saved, and
the witch is dragged back to her cell.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT III, SCENE 7
If Danforth were to be allowed a little time to think, he might be able to see how flawed
his logic is in this situation. But Abigail knows better than to give him this chance.
Hale has openly thrown himself on Proctor's side: I believe him! This girl has always
struck me false! She moves fast, turning on a torment. This time it's not a vague cold
wind coming out of nowhere; it's a yellow bird with sharp claws, and its name is Mary
Warren.
This is too much for poor Mary. Her protector has been destroyed, and her strength is
gone. At last the truth itself deserts her, because no one will believe it. With her
defenses down all around her, Mary catches the affliction herself. When Proctor tries to
help her, she rushes out of his reach, screaming in horror:
Don't touch me--don't touch me!... You're the Devil's man!
Proctor is finished, and with him goes the last hope for his wife and friends. Realizing
this, Proctor bursts out with one of the most despairing speeches in modern drama:
I say--I say--God is dead!... A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I
see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring
men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your
black hearts that this be fraud--God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will
burn together.
This speech comes at the end of a crescendo of excitement, like a volcano erupting. It's
hard to imagine a more perfect opportunity for the playwright to put his message across.
To some, that is exactly what this speech is: the author's thematic statement. The key
phrase here is, For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance.... Proctor is blaming
himself as well as the others for this catastrophe. He should have stopped this madness
when he had the chance. Arthur Miller is telling his audience: Don't be like John
Proctor. Come out against superstition (in this case, McCarthyism) wherever you find it,
and do it now, before it's too late. if you're looking for the message of the play, here
it is.
Others see more here than just the author using Proctor as a mouthpiece. Of course, what
Proctor says is important. But isn't there something familiar about his emotional state
when he makes this speech? Haven't we heard someone sound like this before?
Look at Tituba's confession near the end of Act I:
...Mr. Parris must be kill! Mr. Parris no goodly man, Mr. Parris mean man and no gentle
man, and [the Devil] bid me rise out of my bed and cut your throat!
Even closer to hand, just moments before there was a similar outburst from Mary Warren:
Don't touch me--don't touch me!... You're the Devil's man!... I'll not hang with you! I
love God, I love God.... I'll murder you, he says, if my wife hangs! We must go and
overthrow the court, he says!... He wake me every night, his eyes were like coals and his
fingers claw my neck, and I sign, I sign...
There is even a kind of echo of the rhythm of Mary's speech in Proctor's A fire, a fire
is burning! and we will burn, we will burn together. We have the same explosion of
pent-up fury, and the same calling down of destruction. Tituba rages at Parris; Mary
attacks Proctor. Proctor, caught in the same trap, turns his wrath on everyone. He is
saying, in effect, the world is insane. Blow up the world.
NOTE: This is almost pure nihilism. The word nihil in Latin means nothing. Proctor is
calling for annihilation, not just of himself, but of Danforth, the court, and the entire
community. This interpretation says that there is no simple or easy way to stop the
spread of this kind of madness once it starts. The only way to save Salem now is to
demolish it.
However you look at Proctor's speech, it definitely marks the conclusion of the main
story. The suspense is over. The forces of madness have triumphed, our hero is destroyed,
and the witch-hunt will continue. It may burn itself out, or go on forever--there's
nothing to stop it anymore.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 1
At the end of every play the loose ends have to be handled. This is called the
denouement. Usually it comes in the last few minutes of the play, following the
catastrophe, that moment when the hero's fortunes hit bottom.
In a way, all of Act IV of The Crucible, is denouement. The catastrophe occurred at the
end of Act III when Proctor was betrayed by Mary Warren. Things can't get any worse. But
there are still loose ends, and Arthur Miller uses Act IV to tie them up. He does this by
once again focusing on the relationship between John and Elizabeth Proctor. They have not
seen each other in the three months that have elapsed since Act III. Considering what
their last meeting was like, their reunion is likely to be intense.
But first it must be set up. In this first scene we see two deranged women, Tituba and
Sarah Good, being cleared out of their cell by a drunk Marshal Herrick. Apparently
something important is about to take place, because it's the middle of the night.
NOTE: In one short stroke Arthur Miller sets the mood and hints at what's happened in the
last three months. A cow bellows outside the window, and both women jump up and answer,
thinking it's the Devil finally come to take them home. The ordeal those poor souls have
been through has unhinged their minds. They have taken refuge from the insanity of the
real world in a blissful fantasy of singing and dancing where it's always warm and the
Devil, him be pleasureman in Barbados.
But Herrick knows it's not Satan, just a poor old cow with a hatful of milk. It's a
strange image, a cow in the middle of the town, complaining through the night because she
hasn't been milked. We'll soon find out what it means.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 2
After Tituba and Sarah have been removed, Danforth and Hathorne come in, followed by
their stolid assistant, Cheever. In this brief scene we hear some troubling news.
Reverend Hale has returned after denouncing the court. Hathorne reports that Reverend
Parris seems to be losing his grip. And Cheever explains about the cow:
There be so many cows wanderin' the highroads, now their masters are in the jails, and
much disagreement who they will belong to now.
In other words, Salem is falling apart. Almost everyone who speaks from now on will do
variations on this theme, building an image of the community in total disintegration.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 3
Reverend Parris enters and explains that Reverend Hale is praying with the prisoners, to
get them to confess. Danforth takes this as good news. But Parris isn't finished. Abigail
and Mercy Lewis have disappeared. They stole all Parris' money and took passage on a ship
three days ago. By now they are well out of reach. And Parris thinks he knows why. A
rumor has hit Salem that the neighboring town of Andover have thrown out the court... and
will have no part of witchcraft. The girls got out before the storm hit here.
Parris' life has been threatened already, and he's afraid that Salem will riot if they
hang Proctor and Rebecca Nurse today. But Danforth will not postpone the executions.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 4
Reverend Hale comes in to add his plea to Parris'. The prisoners will not confess; he
must have more time. Danforth explains why he won't postpone. Things are uncertain
enough; if the court falters the least bit now, there is real danger of losing control of
the situation. But a confession will secure the courts position. He sends for Elizabeth
Proctor. Maybe she can persuade her husband to confess.
Once again, notice how Hale has changed. In Act III he was near the edge, but up until
the very end he hung onto the belief that he was doing the right thing by helping the
court. But when Proctor was condemned, it was the last straw.
Now Hale has returned, but for what purpose?
Why, it is all simple. I come to do the Devil's work. I come to counsel Christians they
should belie themselves. There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my
head!!
This recalls Giles Corey's anguished cry at the beginning of Act III: I have broke
charity with the woman. The difference is that Hale has broke charity with a lot more
than one person. And now he must break charity with God, by counselling them to lie in
order to save their lives.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 5
We see the depth of Hale's disillusionment and disgust with himself when he pleads with
Elizabeth to get Proctor to confess:
Beware, Goody Proctor--cleave to no faith when faith brings blood.... Life, woman, life
is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of
it.
Here is another speech that looks like a good candidate for author's thematic statement.
And it's spoken by the man who's most like us.
But Hale by now is a lost soul. A minister of God, he is counselling people to lie. How
can we have faith anymore in anything he says? Elizabeth senses this, and tells him, I
think that be the Devil's argument.
Besides, it's a useless subject to dispute. Elizabeth has more pressing business on her
mind than theological arguments. She must see her husband one last time. She has
something to tell him.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 6
This scene is not long, but a lot happens in it. In terms of the plot, it's pretty
simple: John explains to Elizabeth why he's going to confess. She urges him to do what he
has to do, and tells him that no matter what he decides, he's a good man. That's it.
We know from Danforth that Proctor's confession is important to the court and the town.
But John doesn't seem to care much what his confession means to anyone but his wife. And
Elizabeth doesn't seem to care whether or not he confesses at all.
What's really going on in this scene has little to do with events in the outside world.
In Act II Arthur Miller made us part of the emotional life of John and Elizabeth's
marriage. We not only care what these people do, we want to know what they feel. John
Proctor will either confess or he won't. If he does, it won't be in this scene. For the
moment, the important thing is to find out what's in their hearts.
The first half of the scene is all small talk, as it was in their first scene together,
the opening of Act II. Now, as then, we get exposition: Elizabeth is healthy, John's been
tortured, the boys are taken care of, no one who matters has yet confessed, and Giles
Corey was pressed to death. They run out of news, and a silence falls. Then John begins
to explain himself.
His main reason for confessing is, as he puts it, I cannot mount the gibbet like a
saint.... Nothing's spoiled by giving them this lie that were not rotten long before. He
feels unworthy to die with the others, for they are truly innocent people. But he wants
Elizabeth to forgive him for this lie he's about to tell. He wants her to see some
honesty in it. In other words, he wants her to judge him. This is a far cry from Act II
when he warned her angrily to learn some charity herself before she judged him.
Of course, a lot has happened since then. But none of it could have meant more to him
than the one lie that Elizabeth told in her life, the lie she thought would save her
husband's name. When Danforth asked her if her husband was a lecher, the two words No,
sir contained all her love for John. And how could he hear those two words without it
breaking his heart?
Elizabeth has also changed. She cannot judge him any more:
John, it come to naught that I should forgive you, if you'll not forgive yourself. It is
not my soul, John, it is yours.
Of course, beneath all this talk of confessing or hanging is another sin than lying. And
that's what Elizabeth really wants to talk about:
I have read my heart this three month, John. I have sins of my own to count. It needs a
cold wife to prompt lechery.
She is telling him that whatever he did in the past is forgiven. He has more than proved
his love for her. Now she wants him to know her love.
This confession of love is more important to her than John's decision to confess or hang.
Without the love she now shows him, either choice he makes is a lie. Her love confirms
his goodness:
Whatever you will do, it is a good man does it.
John doesn't seem to get it. He's carried his guilt around for so long that he's used to
it. In Act II he accused her of twisting her spirit around the single error of his life.
But it's his spirit, not hers, that has become twisted by guilt. He has come to think of
himself as totally corrupt because of this one mistake. It will take some convincing for
him to accept Elizabeth's new vision of John Proctor, the man who is good no matter what
he does. And they have no time.
One thing has happened: Abigail is forgotten. Her name is never mentioned; she has no
power over either of them anymore. Whatever lies in the future, they are now free from
the shadow of suspicion and guilt that chilled their marriage. John and Elizabeth Proctor
are reconciled at last.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 7
Hathorne comes in and Proctor says he'll confess. It's a shaky decision, and he still
feels he needs Elizabeth to back him up. But she has given him his freedom; she won't
take it back now, though his choice breaks her heart.
Hathorne, of course, is electrified by the news. He runs out shouting to the world that
Proctor will confess. But John continues to agonize. Has he made the right decision?
I think it is honest, I think so; I am no saint. Let Rebecca go like a saint; for me it
is fraud!
He is still fishing for Elizabeth's support. Why is he so unsure of himself? His thinking
is sound, all his reasons are the right ones. A travesty of a court convicted him of a
crime that doesn't exist, and even if it did, he didn't commit it. The only thing that's
real is that rope out there. Hale said it: life is God's most precious gift. What
possible reason could John have for throwing it away? Pride? How dare such a sinner as he
is have so much pride?
Remember Elizabeth's answer to Hale. This is the Devil's argument, and Proctor knows she
would never fall for it herself. But he still thinks of her as that goodness. He believes
he knows himself better.
It is evil. Good, then--it is evil, and I do it!
Here is an echo of the same nihilism we heard at the end of Act II and Act III.
Elizabeth's love hasn't saved him yet.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 8
Danforth bustles in with Hathorne, Hale, and Parris. Cheever follows with paper and pen
to take down the confession. Proctor is horrified at their efficiency and glee; he hates
giving these dogs, as he calls them, what they want. But though his jaws lock on him for
a moment, he gets out the basics: the Devil came to him and bid him do his work on earth.
Proctor won't get any further than this in his confession.
NOTE: All of Act IV has been leading up to this moment. But let's stop and think. Isn't
there a problem with these confessions in the first place? Remember in Act II, when Mary
Warren first described the witch trials, she said that Goody Osburn would hang, but that
Sarah Good was saved because she confessed?
In most legal systems, confession is considered conclusive proof of guilt, meaning no
other evidence is necessary to convict the accused. Conviction leads to sentencing, and
in this case the law clearly states what the punishment for witchcraft is to be: Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live. Sarah Good convicted herself when she confessed. How is
it that she is suffered to live?
The flaw in the logic is obvious, as we noted in the discussion of Act II. There are them
that will swear to anything before they'll hang, as Proctor said then, and as he is
thinking of doing now. If the court is really trying to get at the truth, it just doesn't
make sense to offer such an irresistible inducement to life.
But remember how difficult it is to prove the invisible crime of witchcraft. There are
only two witnesses, the witch and the victim. If the judges can get the witch to confess,
it will release the victim from suffering, and spare the judges a difficult decision. In
addition, a confession is, ipso facto--to use Danforth's terminology--a renunciation of
witchcraft. With a confession, the judges not only spared a victim, they rescued a soul
from hell.
This reasoning doesn't completely answer the objection, but it does give some idea of how
the judges see the situation. Hathorne may be narrow-minded and bitter, but he's not
blood-thirsty. And Danforth is more concerned than anyone with doing the right thing--not
only legally, but as a man who has considerable power over the souls of others.
^^^^^^^^^^THE CRUCIBLE: ACT IV, SCENE 9
For this reason, he has Rebecca Nurse brought in to witness Proctor's confession. Proctor
has great standing among the condemned, and if Rebecca can be persuaded to join him in
confessing, maybe the others will follow, and no one will have to hang this morning.
It'll never work. As Elizabeth says, Rebecca has one foot in heaven already, nothing can
hurt her now. Proctor is filled with shame under Rebecca's astonished gaze, though he
tries to keep going in the evil he's decided to do. He hits a snag when he's asked to
name others he's seen with the Devil.
NOTE: Up until now, every confession the judges received implicated others. Naming names
proved the witch was now on God's side and wanted to do everything possible to defeat the
archenemy Satan. Inside information on the Devil's troop strength was obviously the most
valuable service a repentant witch could provide.
We saw it happen at the end of Act I, when the girls, prompted by Tituba, reeled off
names in a frenzy. If every witch did the same in her confession, it's easy to see why
this madness spread as fast as it did.
Proctor can't do it. I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another, he says. Hale and
Parris, though for different reasons, talk Danforth into accepting this much as
sufficient.
Then Proctor has to sign it. He resists, but Danforth has bent enough for this man. John
Proctor signs his name.
What finally gets to him is that this lie, with his signature at the bottom, will be
posted on the church door for the whole world to see. He knows it doesn't make sense, but
that's where the line is for him--he just can't cross it:
Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign
myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I
live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!
This is a stirring speech. If you've ever been in a situation where you've reached your
limit and can't stand any more, you'll recognize the feeling John Proctor is expressing.
NOTE: But what does he mean, I have given you my soul; leave me my name? Surely his soul
is more important than two words on a piece of paper.
It used to be that a man's name meant his reputation. The name of Rebecca Nurse, for
example, was synonymous with goodness, kindness, common sense, and peacemaking. The name
of John Proctor, before the disaster of his trial, meant strength, honesty, and fair
dealing. Is this what Proctor is trying to protect?
Maybe, and maybe more. These people want to use his confession to continue the
witch-hunt. It's bad enough they've destroyed him, but he can't let them use his name to
destroy others.
And there's also the possibility that Proctor means something more fundamental. There is
one Bible verse that John probably knew well.
And out of the ground the lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the
air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam
called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
(Genesis 2:19)
Before man, nothing had a name. A man's name is a symbol of his unique position in God's
creation. Take away John Proctor's name, and he is nothing.
So he rips up his confession. Between Elizabeth's great love and the judges' intolerable
demands, John Proctor has found himself. His guilt, his doubt, his nihilistic rage are
gone. What remains is
...some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not enough to weave a banner with, but white
enough to keep it from such dogs.
He kisses Elizabeth, and goes out with Rebecca to be hanged. Hale pleads with Elizabeth
frantically, but she knows she has won:
He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!
I speak of sin. It is an unfashionable word nowadays and Miller rarely uses it. He is...
sufficiently imbued with the skepticism of modern thought to shy away from the
presumptions implicit in it. But that Miller is willy-nilly a moralist--one who believes
he knows what sin and evil are--is inescapable.
-Harold Clurman, Introduction to
The Portable Arthur Miller, 1972
Despite its realistic form, The Crucible is less dramatic realism than a modern morality
play, in which the characters are intended to be dramatized symbols of good and evil. My
only reason for doubt... is that [George Bernard] Shaw was even more devastating about
intolerance in Saint Joan by giving its representatives a sound logical case and making
them good and conscientious men, and then showing the horrifying results of what they
did.
-Richard Watts, Jr.,
Introduction to The Crucible, 1959
In my play, Danforth seems about to conceive of the truth, and surely there is a
disposition in him at least to listen to arguments that go counter to the line of the
prosecution. There is no such swerving in the record, and I think now, almost four years
after writing it, that I was wrong in mitigating the evil of this man and the judges he
represents. Instead, I would perfect his evil to its utmost and make an open issue, a
thematic consideration of it, in the play.
-Arthur Miller, Introduction to
Arthur Miller's Collected Plays, 1957
With John Proctor... Miller goes for something deeper than the one-dimensional good guy.
Proctor is enough a product of his society to think of himself as a sinner for having
slept with Abigail Williams; so he carries a burden of guilt before he is charged with
having consorted with the devil. When he is finally faced with the choice of death or
confession, his guilt as an adulterer becomes confused with his innocence as a witch; one
sin against society comes to look like another. The stage is set for another victim-hero,
for a John Proctor who is willing to be what men say he is, but at the last minute he
chooses to be his own man.
-Gerald Weales, Arthur Miller's
Shifting Image of Man, 1967
The evil in the play focuses on Abigail as fountainhead.... Her wickedness... amounts to
a shrewd use of the hypocrisy, greed and spite that thrive in her neighbors under the
pretext of seeing justice done. Her power arises from her ability to convert her psychic
energies and the willful pursuit of her own objectives into a genuine visionary hysteria.
At bottom Abby knows that her prophetic fit is self-induced, that the witchcraft she
denounces is non-existent; but once the fit is on her, she can produce a convincing
performance and induce the same kind of hysteria in the children. Her real diabolism is
her misuse of the sacrosanct office of witness to gain her own ends.
-Thomas E. Porter,
The Long Shadow of the Law, 1969
THE END