Playgoer’s Guide to ISU Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
The Crucible premiered on January 22, 1953, at Martin Beck Theatre in New York City. Despite mixed reviews from audiences and critics, it received the Tony Award for Best Play.
Though fiction, the play is based on historical facts. The Crucible portrays the events and ensuing paranoia in the Puritan settlement of Salem Village, Massachusetts, following the mysterious illnesses of two children, Elizabeth "Betty," the nine-year-old daughter of the Reverend Parris, and eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, his niece. When witchcraft is suspected, accusations follow. The girls are questioned by magistrates and under pressure, blame Tituba (Caribbean slave of the Parris family), Sarah Osborne (elderly and impoverished), and Sarah Good (homeless beggar).
During the period known as "The Salem Witch Trials," over 200 people (primarily women, but also men and children) were accused of witchcraft. Twenty people were executed. Nineteen people were hung on "Gallows Hill," and at least 5 of the accused died in jail. Giles Corey was pressed to death for refusing to go to trial; his final words were indeed recorded as "more weight." Two dogs with suspected ties to the devil were executed.
The play is an allegorical response by Arthur Miller to similar paranoia and accusations during the 1950s McCarthy era and the Red Scare in the United States during the Cold War. As Miller explained in his 1996 essay for The New Yorker, just as the Theocracy relied upon "Spectral Evidence" as proof in 1692 Salem, the U.S. government was not so much interested in the actual acts of an accused but his thoughts and intentions. And in the naming of names. To avoid prosecution, one must name "others." Because of his friendships, ties, and art, Miller came under heavy scrutiny during the "Red Scare" of the McCarthy era and was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. When Miller refused to name names, a judge found him guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957. As a result, Miller was fined, given a prison sentence, blacklisted, and disallowed a U.S. passport. In August 1958, his appeal succeeded, and the conviction was overturned.
The Playwright
Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was a celebrated American playwright whose works included All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), and A View From the Bridge (1955). Born to Jewish immigrant parents in Manhattan, the family moved to Brooklyn after his father's garment business failed during the Great Depression. The effects of his father's financial loss, the Depression, and the war that followed influenced Miller's future work as a writer.
A Study Guide for educators and students
The Context of The Crucible: a brief video
Sources:
Colacurcio, Michael J., and Allison M. Johnson, editors. Religion and Its Reformation in America, Beginnings to 1730 : An Anthology of Primary Sources. 1st ed., Baylor University Press, 2020.
Connolly, Brian. “Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan Massachusetts by M. Michelle Jarrett Morris, and: Regulating Passion: Sexuality and Patriarchal Rule in Massachusetts, 1700–1830 by Kelly A. Ryan (Review).” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 3, 2015, pp. 517–22.
Miller, Arthur. Timebends : A Life. 1st ed. Grove Press, 1987.
Miller, Arthur. Why I Wrote "The Crucible" an Artist's Answer to Politics.The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 1996.
Recommended links and additional sources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible
https://www.salem.org/salem-witch-trials/
https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/home.html
https://www.neh.gov/article/records-salem-witch-trials
Statements of Innocence. Part of the memorial for the victims of the 1692 witch trials. Danvers, Mass. Francis Helminski