Crucible

• The Crucible


  A play by Arthur Miller
• This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian
• Dramatic purposes have sometimes required many characters to be fused into one; the number of girls involved in the "crying-out" has been reduced; Abigail's age has been raised; while there were several judges of almost equal authority, the author has symbolized them all in Hathorne and Danforth
• The fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar - and in some cases exactly the same - role in history
• Little is known about most of the characters except what may be surmised from a few letters, the trial record, certain broadsides written at the time, and references to their conduct in sources of varying reliability
• They may therefore be taken as creations of the author's own, drawn to the best of his ability in conformity with their known behavior, except as indicated in the commentary he has written for this text
• Reverend Samuel Parris


  The minister in whose home the play is set, in his middle forties at the time of the events
• Reverend Parris


  • He believed he was being persecuted wherever he went, despite his best efforts to win people and God to his side
  • He regarded children as young adults, and until this strange crisis he, like the rest of Salem, never conceived that the children were anything but thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at the sides, and mouths shut until bidden to speak
• Salem, Massachusetts


  The town where the play is set, established hardly forty years before the events of the play
• Salem had been established hardly forty years before the events of the play
• To the European world the whole province was a barbaric frontier inhabited by a sect of fanatics who, nevertheless, were shipping out products of slowly increasing quantity and value
• The people of Salem did not celebrate Christmas, and a holiday from work meant only that they must concentrate even more upon prayer
• There was a good supply of ne'er-do-wells in Salem, who dallied at the shovelboard in Bridget Bishop's tavern
• The edge of the wilderness was close by, and the American continent stretched endlessly west, full of mystery and danger for the people of Salem
• The Salem folk believed that the virgin forest was the Devil's last preserve, his home base and the citadel of his final stand
• The people of Salem carried about an air of innate resistance, even of persecution, as their fathers had been persecuted in England
• They believed they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world
• The proof of their belief's value to them may be taken from the opposite character of the first Jamestown settlement, farther south, in Virginia
• The times, to the eyes of the people of Salem in 1692, must have been out of joint, and to the common folk must have seemed as insoluble and complicated as do ours today
• It is not hard to see how easily many could have been led to believe that the time of confusion had been brought upon them by deep and darkling forces
• The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom
• The witch-hunt was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims
• Land-lust which had been expressed before by constant bickering over boundaries and deeds, could now be elevated to the arena of morality; one could cry witch against one's neighbor and feel perfectly justified in the bargain
• Old scores could be settled on a plane of heavenly combat between Lucifer and the Lord; suspicions and the envy of the miserable toward the happy could and did burst out in the general revenge
• Tituba


  Reverend Parris's Negro slave, brought by him from Barbados
• Abigail Williams


  Reverend Parris's seventeen-year-old niece, an orphan with an endless capacity for dissembling
• Susanna Walcott


  A nervous, hurried girl, younger than Abigail, who brings news from Doctor Griggs
• Thomas Putnam was a man with many grievances, at least one of which appears justified. Some time before, his wife's brother-in-law, James Bayley, had been turned down as minister of Salem. Bayley had all the qualifications, and a two-thirds vote into the bargain, but a faction stopped his acceptance, for reasons that are not clear.
• Thomas Putnam was the eldest son of the richest man in the village. He had fought the Indians at Narragansett, and was deeply interested in parish affairs. He undoubtedly felt it poor payment that the village should so blatantly disregard his candi-date for one of its more important offices, especially since he regarded himself as the intellectual superior of most of the people around him.
• His vindictive nature was demonstrated long before the witch-craft began. Another former Salem minister, George Burroughs, had had to borrow money to pay for his wife's funeral, and, since the parish was remiss in his salary, he was soon bankrupt. Thomas and his brother John had Burroughs jailed for debts the man did not owe.
• Thomas Putnam felt that his own name and the honor of his family had been smirched by the village, and he meant to right matters however he could.
• Another reason to believe him a deeply embittered man was his attempt to break his father's will, which left a dispropor-tionate amount to a stepbrother. As with every other public cause in which he tried to force his way, he failed in this.
• So it is not surprising to find that so many accusations against people are in the handwriting of Thomas Putnam, or that his name is so often found as a witness corroborating the super-natural testimony, or that his daughter led the crying-out at the most opportune junctures of the trials, especially when - But we'll speak of that when we come to it.
• the proportions of a battle in the woods between partisans of both sides, and it is said to have lasted for two days
• the general opinion of Rebecca's character was so high that to explain how anyone dared cry her out for a witch - and more, how adults could bring themselves to lay hands on her - we must look to the fields and boundaries of that time
• Thomas Putnam's man for the Salem ministry was Bayley. The Nurse clan had been in the faction that prevented Bayley's taking office
• certain families allied to the Nurses by blood or friendship, and whose farms were contiguous with the Nurse farm or close to it, combined to break away from the Salem town authority and set up Topsfield, a new and independent entity whose existence was resented by old Salemites
• the guiding hand behind the outcry was Putnam's, as indicated by the fact that, as soon as it began, this Topsfield-Nurse 'faction absented themselves from church in protest and disbelief
• Edward and Jonathan Putnam signed the first complaint against Rebecca; and Thomas Putnam's little daughter was the one who fell into a fit at the hearing and pointed to Rebecca as her attacker
• Mrs. Putnam soon accused Rebecca's spirit of "tempting her to iniquity," a charge that had more truth in it than Mrs. Putnam could know