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For the 1996 film, see The Crucible (film). For other uses, see Crucible (disambiguation).

The Crucible
Written by	Arthur Miller
Characters	Abigail Williams Reverend John Hale Reverend Samuel Parris John Proctor Elizabeth Proctor Thomas Danforth Mary Warren
Date premiered	22 January 1953
Original language	English
Subject	Salem witch trials
Genre	Tragedy, Drama
Setting	Salem, Massachusetts

The Crucible is a 1953 play by Arthur Miller, describing events that occurred during Salem witch trials. Miller used that event as an allegory for McCarthyism and the Red Scare, which was a period in the 1940s and 1950s in which Americans were in fear of communism and the government blacklisted accused communists. Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956. The play was first performed on Broadway on January 22, 1953. The reviews of the first production were hostile, but a year later a new production succeeded and the play became a classic. Today it is often studied in high schools and universities, both because of its status as a revolutionary work of theatre and as a document to political events of the 1950s.

The play was adapted for film twice, by Jean-Paul Sartre as the 1957 film Les Sorcières de Salem and by Miller himself as the 1996 film The Crucible, the latter with a cast including Paul Scofield, Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. Miller's adaptation earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay based on Previously Produced Material, his only nomination. The play was also adapted by composer Robert Ward into an opera, The Crucible, which was first performed in 1961 and received the Pulitzer Prize.

The play has also been presented several times on stage and television. One notable 1967 TV production starred George C. Scott as John Proctor, Colleen Dewhurst (Scott's wife at the time) as Elizabeth Proctor, and Tuesday Weld as Abigail Williams.

Plot Summary

Act 1

The play begins in the bedroom of Betty Parris, the daughter of the local preacher Samuel Parris. She has fallen ill and into a mania. It is soon discovered that Betty was found with some local girls who were dancing and chanting around a fire in the woods with Parris's slave, Tituba. A well to-do in the town, Thomas Putnam, and his wife, Ann Putnam, are also concerned as their daughter, Ruth, has also fallen sick after the escapade in the forest. Panic spreads through the village as people believe that witchcraft is afoot. Reverend Parris sends for the Reverend John Hale, an authority on witchcraft, to investigate what is going on. Reverend Parris questions the manipulative Abigail Williams, who is the unofficial leader of the group of girls, regarding what took place in the forest. Abigail denies any witchcraft and claims she and the girls were simply dancing. Abigail then threatens the other girls to prevent them from revealing what really happened in the forest the last night. John Proctor enters, and Abigail confronts him, alluding to her having an affair with him. When Parris and Hale interrogate Tituba, she confesses to witchcraft after Parris threatens to whip her to death. She accuses Sarah Good and Goody Osborne, and she is only sentenced to a short term in prison. Betty and Abigail take Tituba's cue, confess witchcraft, and start accusing almost all of the women from town.

Act 2

Late one evening in the Proctor household, John Proctor comes home from planting in his fields to his wife, Elizabeth. Their forced conversation eventually grows into an argument concerning John's past infidelity with Abigail and Elizabeth's inability to either forgive or forget the incident. Mary Warren, their house servant, comes home in a disturbed state. She is serving as a clerk of the court and witnessed the first handing down of a death sentence to one of the accused witches that very day. She gives Elizabeth a poppet that she made during the trials that day. Mary then goes to bed, but only after telling the Proctors that Elizabeth's name has been mentioned in the court. John and Elizabeth continue their argument, now enhanced by Elizabeth's fear of Abigail and the other girls' vicious power in the courts. They are interrupted by the sudden appearance of John Hale at their doorway. He is traveling from house to house, speaking to those mentioned in the court to gain more information about them. During their discussion, John reveals that he is aware that Abigail and the other girls are lying. They are all then interrupted by two Salem citizens that have had wives arrested, and they are shortly followed by a party come to arrest Elizabeth. They find a needle stuck in the poppet Mary gave Elizabeth, which appears to confirm the accusation on witchcraft made upon Elizabeth by Abigail (this is also called a voodoo doll). The act closes with Elizabeth being taken away and John telling Mary that she will come to the court to dispute the claims made by Abigail .....................................................

Act 3

Act Three takes place 33 days after the events in Act Two, set in the Salem court house. Mr. Corey and Mr. Proctor have come to disrupt the proceedings so that the judges can be presented with evidence that the girls are lying. Judge Hathorne, the lead judge in the trials, has little patience for them and dismisses them quickly. Soon, however, John Proctor and Mary Warren arrive to dispute Abigail's claims. Danforth questions Mary and Proctor, revealing that Elizabeth has been found to be pregnant, and decides to investigate the situation further, calling in Abigail and the other girls. The resulting actions result in Corey being arrested for contempt of court and warrants issued for several citizens that had supported the claims of Mr. Nurse. While examining Abby further, Parris and others try to get Mary to demonstrate how she and the other girls would faint. She cannot, and Abigail and the girls start to make accusations against Mary. To attempt to break the hold that Abigail has, John admits to his infidelity with her. In order to determine if John Proctor is telling the truth, they call Elizabeth into the courtroom. Despite John's assertion that Elizabeth never lies, she does not admit to any belief that John has ever strayed, in an attempt to save his name. This results in Mary and John's claims being dismissed. Abigail and the other girls then go into violent fits, accusing Mary of dark witchcraft. Mary becomes completely desperate and turns on John Proctor, saying that he is in league with the Devil. John states that if these events can occur, then "God is dead." The courtroom erupts into chaos and the act ends.

Even though it was a rough night Abigail and the other girls were still scared of the nurse.

Act 4

Act Four starts with Proctor chained to a jail wall totally isolated from the outside. The authorities send Elizabeth to him, telling her to try to convince Proctor to confess. Proctor gives in to the authorities and the advice of Reverend Hale. Hale is now a broken man who spends all his time with the prisoners, praying with them and hoping to save their lives from their unjust fates. Hale advises prisoners to confess to witchcraft, so that they can live. Proctor signs a confession, but retracts it when he realizes that Danforth intended to nail the confession to the church door (which Proctor fears will ruin his name and the names of other Salemites). The play ends with Proctor and Rebecca Nurse (an accused witch) being led to the gallows.

Characters

• John Proctor - a hard working farmer, and native of Salem who lives just outside town; he is married to Elizabeth Proctor. Before the play, he has an affair with Abigail Williams, which ultimately leads to his downfall. When the hysteria over witchcraft begins in the village, he fails to expose Abigail as a fraud for fear of spoiling his good name. However, when his wife is accused, he tries to tell the court the truth, but it is too late. He is then accused himself of witchcraft by Mary Warren. He is sentenced to be hanged unless he names other witches and repents; however, Proctor dies rather than lie about his friends.

• Abigail Williams - Williams is Parris’ niece. She is 17 years old in the play and during the trials. Abigail was once the maid for the Proctor house, but Elizabeth Proctor fired her after she discovered that Abigail was having an affair with her husband, John Proctor. Abigail and her uncle's slave, Tituba, lead the local girls in love-spell rituals in the Salem forest over a fire. Rumors of witchcraft fly, and Abigail tries to use the town's fear to her advantage. She viciously accuses many of witchcraft, starting first with the outcasts of society and gradually moving up to respected members of the community. Finally, she accuses Elizabeth Proctor, most likely out of spite. She is manipulative and dramatic, as well as darkly charismatic. She resists anyone who stands in her way (i.e. Mary Warren, Mrs. Proctor). She later flees Salem during the trials and, "legend has it", becomes a prostitute in Boston. In real life, the maidservant in the Proctor household was not Abigail Williams, but the teenage Mary Warren, who was both an accuser and accused. The real Abigail Williams was only 11 years old in 1692 and she did not have an affair with the real John Proctor, who was 60. The real Abiagail Williams was an orphaned niece of Minister Samuel Parris and Elizabeth Parris and lived with them. Although Samuel Parris was minister he came to Salem to preach after he went to Barbados and bought Tituba and another slave, John Indian

• Reverend John Hale - Hale is a well respected minister reputed to be an expert on witchcraft. Reverend Hale is called in to Salem to examine the case, and Parris’s daughter Betty, who has fallen into a mysterious illness after being discovered participating in the suspect rituals. He originally believes that there are witches in Salem and advocates the trials, but later realizes the widespread corruption and abuse of the trials, and struggles to get accused witches to lie and confess, rather than stick to the truth, and die.

• Elizabeth Proctor - John Proctor's wife, and a resident of Salem. She is accused of witchcraft, and is only saved from death due to the fact that she is pregnant. Abigail hates her for being Proctor's wife, and for keeping Proctor's heart.

• Reverend Samuel Parris - Parris is the poorly respected minister of Salem’s church. He is disliked by many Salem residents because of his greedy, dominating nature. The man is more concerned about his reputation than of the well being of his sick daughter, Betty. He is also less concerned about his missing niece, Abigail Williams, and the lives of the dead and condemned on his conscience and more about the money taken. He is related to the history of Salem where in real life his niece and daughter were the first to be accused of witchcraft and he owned the slave, Tituba who was also accused of witchcraft and survived prison.

Sub Characters

• Giles Corey - Giles is a friend of John Proctor, who is very concerned about his land. He believes Thomas Putnam is trying to take it and other people's land by getting the girls to accuse Giles' wife of witchcraft. Giles gains this information from an anonymous man whom he will not name as he knows the man would be put in prison. Instead of telling them he lets his interrogators kill him under the weight of rocks stacked on his torso. The character of Giles Corey is based on a real person.

It is unusual for persons to refuse to plead, and extremely rare to find reports of persons who have been able to endure this painful form of death in silence. The pressing of Giles Corey is unique in New England. It is similar to the case, in England, of Margaret Clitherow, who, having been arrested on the 10th of March, 1586 for the crime of harboring priests, hearing Mass, and secretly being of the Catholic faith, she refused to plead, since the only witnesses against her would be her own small children and servants, whom she could not bear to involve. Therefore, when arraigned on the 14th of March 1586 she was condemned to the peine forte et dure, to be pressed to death, and this was carried out on Lady Day, 1586, even though it was most likely that she was with child at the time, which should have protected her from execution. She was laid on the ground, a sharp stone beneath her back, hands stretched out and bound between two posts, and a door placed on top of her, which was weighted down, until she was crushed to death. Her last words were "Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! Have mercy on me!" Because she did not plead, her family could not be involved further in any investigation of her actions.

In the play, we hear Giles' story by proxy, out of the mouth of Elizabeth Proctor: "Elizabeth : He were not hanged. He would not answer aye or nay to his indictment; for if he denied the charge they'd hang him surely, and auction out his property. So he stand mute, and died Christian under the law. And so his sons will have his farm. It is the law, for he could not be condemned a wizard without he answer the indictment, aye or nay." From this it is obvious of Giles' reason for holding out so long against so much pain: As long as he did not answer yes or no, his children would be able to keep his estate. Whether this was for his children's sake or for an attempt to spite Thomas Putnam's greedy obsession with buying up land is arguable. The play supports both possibilities.

• Thomas Putnam - Thomas Putnam is a man who lives in Salem village and owns a bit of land close to Giles Corey, Giles accuses him of trying to steal it when he says Putnam got his daughter to accuse Giles' wife of witchcraft.

• Tituba - Tituba is Rev. Parris' slave. Parris seems to have owned and possibly purchased her in Barbados. She cares for the children and prepares a potion for Abigail that will kill Elizabeth Proctor. Additionally, she attempts to raise the spirits of Ann Putnam's dead children. During the first scene of the play, she is turned on by Abigail and responds by claiming that four women in Salem are witches. She is not seen again until the final scene of the play in the jail. It seems that by this point the events have troubled her to the point of hallucinations and hysteria.

• Mary Warren - Mary Warren is the girl who serves as housemaid for the Proctors after Abigail Williams. The play portrays her as a lonely girl who considers herself an "official of the court" at the beginning of the trials. She nearly confesses that she and the other girls were lying about witchcraft until the other girls pretend that she is sending out her spirit upon them in the courtroom. This event, which could have led to her death, propels her to accuse John Proctor of witchcraft and to state that he forced her to lie about herself and the others.

Historical Accuracy

In large part, Arthur Miller's play is surprisingly true to today's historical knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials. However, there are one or two notable differences:

The first is the story between John and Abigail. In The Crucible, John is continuously troubled by a brief affair that he had with Abigail some time before the play's opening. Abigail, at one point, attempts to use John's lechery against him, wrongly assuming he would never willingly admit it to the court.

Historically speaking, John Proctor was, in reality, over sixty years old when the trials began, and Abigail was eleven years old. Arthur Miller made Abigail a seventeen-year old, and brought John's age down to a man in his mid-thirties. This artistic license helps strengthen the plot, tying characters together in a way that they never were tied together in real life. Miller, as a writer, probably did so to add more depth to a story that likely would have somewhat less than a cohesive plot if it were an exact transcript of actual events. Such things frequently happen in historical fiction, generally because life usually does not follow so straight a line as a book does.

Film adaptations

The play has been adapted in four notable versions:

• In a French and German film version known as Les Sorcières de Salem, in 1956, released in the U.S. in 1957. It starred Yves Montand as John, Simone Signoret as Elizabeth, and Mylène Demongeot as Abigail.

• In a TV version shot on videotape in 1967, directed by Don Taylor, starring George C. Scott as John Proctor, Tuesday Weld as Abigail, and Colleen Dewhurst as Elizabeth.

• A British TV version in 1980.

• The latest version is a film in 1996 and starred Winona Ryder as Abigail, Daniel Day-Lewis as John and Joan Allen as Elizabeth. Arthur Miller wrote the screenplay for this version. For the article on this adaptation, see The Crucible. Miller was nominated for an Oscar for his screen adaptation, with Allen also receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

See also

• The Crucible - 1996 Film based on the play

References

• Internet Broadway Database entry for The Crucible

External links

• McCarthyism and the Movies
• Arthur Miller's The Crucible:Fact & Fiction by Margo Burns
• Theme / Character Analysis of The Crucible
• "The Crucible" Literature Study Guide at SparkNotes

• Articles lacking sources from December 2007
• 1953 plays
• Arthur Miller plays
• Salem witch trials
• McCarthyism