The Crucible

The Crucible
Written by	Arthur Miller
Characters	Abigail Williams Reverend John Hale Reverend Samuel Parris John Proctor Elizabeth Proctor Thomas Danforth Mary Warren John Hathorne Giles Corey Rebecca Nurse
Date premiered	January 22, 1953
Place premiered	Martin Beck Theatre, New York City
Original language	English
Subject	Salem witch trials, McCarthyism
Genre	Tragedy, drama
Setting	Salem, Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Crucible is a 1953 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay during 1692 and 1693. Miller wrote the play as an allegory of McCarthyism, when the U.S. government blacklisted accused communists.^[1] Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.^[2]

The play was first performed at the Martin Beck Theater on Broadway on January 22, 1953, starring E.G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight and Madeleine Sherwood. Miller felt that this production was too stylized and cold and the reviews for it were largely hostile (although The New York Times noted "a powerful play [in a] driving performance").^[3] Nonetheless, the production won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Play.^[4] A year later a new production succeeded and the play became a classic.^[5] It is a central work in the canon of American drama.^[6]

Synopsis

Act One

Betty Parris, the teenage daughter of Salem Reverend Samuel Parris, lies motionless. The previous evening Reverend Parris discovered Betty, some other girls and his Barbadian slave, Tituba, engaged in some sort of ritual in the woods. The village is rife with rumors of witchcraft. A crowd has gathered outside Rev. Parris’s house. The Reverend questions the girls' apparent ringleader, Abigail Williams, who denies they were engaged in witchery. Parris decides to invite Reverend John Hale, an expert in witchcraft and demonology, to investigate and leaves to address the crowd.

The other girls involved in the incident join Abigail and a briefly roused Betty. Abigail coerces and threatens the others to "stick to their story" of merely dancing in the woods - and deny other events took place, including attempts to place a curse on Abigail's former employer Elizabeth Proctor, which involved drinking chicken blood. The other girls are frightened of the truth being revealed and being labelled witches, so go along with Abigail. Betty faints back into unconsciousness.

John Proctor, a local farmer and husband of Elizabeth, enters. He sends the other girls out (including Mary Warren, his family's maid) and is alone with Abigail. We discover Abigail was formerly the Proctor's maid, and she and John had an affair. Elizabeth discovered the affair and fired Abigail. Abigail still harbors feelings for John and believes he reciprocates, but John says he does not. Abigail angrily mocks John for denying his true feelings for her, and for being afraid of his wife.

Rev Parris returns and various villagers arrive including the wealthy and influential Thomas and Ann Putnam, respected local woman Rebecca Nurse and the Putnam's neighbor, Giles Corey. Tensions between them emerge. Mrs Putnam has had seven children die shortly after birth; she blames witchcraft for her misfortune. Putnam and Corey have a dispute over a land purchase. Parris is unhappy with his salary and other conditions as Reverend, and argues with Proctor and Corey. Proctor expresses dissatisfaction with the Reverend’s preaching (claiming there is too much "fire and brimstone" in Parris’s sermons). Proctor is also unhappy that Parris invited Reverend Hale to investigate the witchcraft allegations without consulting the villagers. Abigail, standing quietly in a corner, witnesses all of this.

Reverend Hale arrives. He questions Rev. Parris, Abigail and Tituba closely over the girls' activities in the woods. As the facts emerge, Abigail claims Tituba forced her to drink blood. Tituba counters that Abigail begged her to conjure a deadly curse, before Tituba breaks down and claims she is under the influence of the devil and the girls have also been afflicted. With prompting from Hale and Putnam, Tituba names two local women (one of them the Putnams’ midwife) as also under the influence of the devil. Abigail leaps up, begins contorting wildly and naming several local people she saw “dancing with the devil”. Betty suddenly rises and begins mimicking Abigail’s movements and words. Hale orders the arrest of the named people.

Act Two

Act Two is set in the Proctor's home. John and Elizabeth are incredulous that nearly forty people have been arrested for witchcraft based on the pronouncements of Abigail and the other girls. John knows their apparent possession and accusations of witchcraft are untrue, as Abigail told him when they were alone together in the First Act. Elizabeth is disconcerted to learn her husband was alone with Abigail and John demands Elizabeth “stop judging me” over his past sins.

Mary Warren, their maid, enters and gives Elizabeth a 'poppet' (doll-like puppet) she made in court that day while sitting as a witness. Angered that Mary is spending time in court instead of working in their house, John threatens to beat her. Mary retorts that she saved Elizabeth's life that day, as Elizabeth was accused of witchcraft and was to be arrested until Mary spoke in her defence. Mary refuses to identify Elizabeth's accuser, but Elizabeth surmises it must be Abigail.

Rev. Hale arrives, stating he is interviewing all the people named in proceedings. Hale notes the Proctors do not attend church regularly; John replies he doesn’t care for Rev. Parris. Challenged to recite the Ten Commandments, John forgets "thou shalt not commit adultery". At Elizabeth’s urging, John tells Hale he knows the girl's afflictions are pretence and have nothing to do with witchcraft. When Hale responds that many of the accused have confessed, John points out they were bound to be hanged if they didn’t.

Two court officers arrive to arrest Elizabeth for witchcraft, to Hale's surprise. An officer picks up the poppet on Elizabeth's table and finds a needle inside. He informs her that Abigail had a pain-induced fit earlier that evening and a needle was found in her stomach; Abigail claimed Elizabeth caused the fit through witchcraft. John brings Mary into the room to tell the truth about the poppet, including the fact Mary herself put the needle in the doll. The officers remove Elizabeth anyway.

John becomes greatly angered, tearing the arrest warrant to shreds and asking Hale why the accusers’ every utterance goes unchallenged. Hale begins to doubt the witchcraft allegations. John Proctor urges Mary to go to court with him and expose the other girls’ lies, but Mary is too frightened of Abigail. Mary also knows about John and Abigail's affair and that Abigail is willing to expose it. John is shocked by this but determines the truth must out, whatever the personal cost.

Act Three

Act Three takes place in the Salem Courthouse building. John Proctor arrives with Mary Warren and they inform Deputy Governor Danforth and Judge Hathorne about the girls’ lies. Danforth decides Proctor is trying to disrupt the court in order to save his wife; he tells John that Elizabeth won't be hanged, because she is pregnant. John submits a deposition signed by ninety-one locals attesting to the good character of Elizabeth, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey (Giles’s wife), also under arrest. The deposition is dismissed as an attack on the court, prompting John to wonder why arguments for the defence are being construed as attacks on the court. Giles Corey accuses Thomas Putnam of orchestrating Martha's arrest for financial gain, but when Corey refuses to name the source of his information, he is also arrested.

Abigail and the other girls are brought in. Abigail denies Mary's assertions that they are pretending to be possessed, and stands by her story about the poppet. When asked by Danforth to 'pretend to be possessed', Mary begins to falter. Abigail claims Mary is bewitching them with a cold wind and John loses his temper, calling Abigail a whore. He confesses their affair, says Abigail was fired from his household over it and that he believes all of Abigail's behavior since is aimed at removing Elizabeth and replacing her at John's side. Danforth brings Elizabeth in to confirm this story. Unaware of John's public confession, Elizabeth lies and says there was no affair, and that she fired Abigail out of suspicion. John cries out in despair as Elizabeth is led away. Hale begs Danforth to reconsider, now agreeing Abigail is "false", but to no avail.

Confusion and hysteria begin to overtake the room. Abigail and the girls run about screaming, claiming Mary's spirit is attacking them in the form of a yellow bird (that no-one else can see). Several times, Mary yells at the girls to stop it, but they merely repeat Mary's words. An increasingly distraught Mary eventually joins with the other girls and recants all her allegations against them, claiming John Proctor forced her to turn against the others because John harbors the devil. John Proctor is arrested and Rev. Hale angrily quits the court.

Act Four

Act Four takes place some time later. Danforth and Hathorne return to Salem and meet with Parris and Hale. Over one-hundred people have been charged with witchcraft; most have confessed; twelve have been hanged; seven remain in prison, refusing to confess, including John Proctor, Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey. Giles Corey was tortured to death as the court tried to extract a plea; by refusing to enter a plea, Corey ensured his sons were not disinherited. The village is becoming dysfunctional with so many of its’ people in prison, in court or under suspicion. Parris reports Abigail and one of the other girls stole money from his house and have disappeared. Hale presses Danforth to pardon the remaining seven and put the entire affair behind them, as people are beginning to revolt against the court's authority. Danforth refuses, stating pardons would cast doubt on the veracity of previous confessions, not to mention the hangings.

Danforth asks Elizabeth to persuade John to confess. She and John have a lengthy discussion, during which John says he is refusing to confess not out of religious conviction, like Rebecca and Martha, but through contempt for his accusers and the court. John finally decides he has no desire to be a martyr, and confesses to engaging in witchcraft.

Danforth and Hathorne, happy and relieved, ask John to testify to the guilt of the other hold-outs and the executed. John refuses, saying he can only report on his own sins. Danforth then asks John to sign a written confession, to be displayed on the church door as an example. John is wary, thinking his verbal confession is sufficient. As they press him further John eventually signs the confession, but refuses to hand the paper over, stating he does not want his family and especially his two sons to be stigmatized by the public confession. The men argue until Proctor renounces his confession entirely, ripping up the signed document. Danforth calls for the sheriff and John is led away, to be hanged with the other six non-confessors. Hale pleads with Elizabeth to talk John around but she refuses, stating John has “found his goodness”.

In an Epilogue, we learn Parris was dismissed as Reverend of Salem and has not been seen since; Abigail was rumoured to have become a prostitute in Boston; Elizabeth remarried a few years following John's death; the excommunications resulting from the confessions were overturned; the farms of the executed went fallow and remained that way for several years.

Characters (in order of appearance)

Reverend Samuel Parris

Parris is the minister of Salem's church, disliked by many residents because of his greedy, domineering personality. He is more concerned about his reputation than the well-being of his sick daughter Betty. He is also more concerned about his missing niece, Abigail Williams, and the money taken by her, than for the lives of Williams' and the other girls' victims. Abigail and Betty were the first to accuse others of witchcraft, and he owned the slave, Tituba, the first to be accused of witchcraft.

Tituba

Tituba is Reverend Parris's slave. Parris seems to have owned and purchased her in Barbados back in his time as a merchant. She cares for the children and prepares a potion for the girls to attract the men and boys they fancy, Abigail wants to kill Elizabeth Proctor for John Proctor and rarely Elizabeth Parris. Additionally, she attempts to raise the spirits of Ann Putnam's dead children at their behest. During the first scene of the play, she is turned in 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 taking place in the jail. By this point the events have troubled her to the point that she is haunted by hallucinations and hysteria. She and Sarah Good (whose infant child died in prison) are both mentally unsound by this point.

Abigail Williams

Williams is Parris' 17-year-old niece and the play's antagonist.^[7] Abigail was previously the maid for the Proctor house, fired by Elizabeth after her discovery of Abigail's affair with her husband, John. 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 accuses many of witchcraft, starting first with the society's outcasts and gradually moving up to respected members of the community. Finally, she accuses Elizabeth Proctor, believing that John truly loves her and not Elizabeth. Abigail wants Elizabeth out of the way so that she and John can marry. John says that Abigail "hopes to dance with me upon my wife's grave." She is manipulative and charismatic, attacking anyone who stands in her way. She flees Salem during the trials with Mercy Lewis.

Susanna Walcott

Susanna is a nervous and hasty girl, a little younger than Abigail and she participated with Abigail, Betty, Mercy and Mary in the ritual in the woods. She works for Dr. Griggs.

Ann Putnam

Ann Putnam is the wife of Thomas Putnam. She has one daughter, Ruth (also known as Ann Putnam, Jr.), but has "laid seven babies un-baptized in the earth." Ann is accusatory and harsh, due to the trauma of the deaths of all save one of her children. In real life, Ann Putnam (née Carr) bore twelve children, ten of whom survived their parents, who both died in 1699.

Thomas Putnam

Thomas Putnam lives in Salem and owns land close to Giles Corey. Giles accuses him of trying to steal it, and says that Putnam got his daughter to accuse Giles' wife of witchcraft. This possibility is strongly supported in the play. Putnam uses the girls to advance his greed, resentments and grudges.

Betty Parris

Betty Parris is the ten-year-old daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris and is the first to become ill after being "bewitched".

Mercy Lewis

Mary Warren

John Proctor

John Proctor is the play's protagonist and husband of Elizabeth Proctor. John is a local farmer with strong ethical convictions and an independent streak, demonstrated in his willingness to challenge traditional authority figures (the Reverends and Judges) with whom he disagrees. John's earlier affair with maid Abigail Williams and her subsequent, unrequited feelings for him are shown to underlie many of the play's events. John suffers guilt and the distrust of his wife over the affair, but is willing to be publicly shamed over it in order to stop the witch trials. John argues the case for reason and justice during the trials, and encourages his maid Mary Warren to testify in court to the girls' lies. But during her testimony Mary is intimidated by the girls, who prey on her fear and weakness of character. Mary recants her testimony and instead accuses John Proctor of practising witchcraft, resulting in his arrest. Initially, John refuses to confess out of spite for his accusers rather than on moral or religious grounds, but during a later conversation with his wife Elizabeth, decides he does not want to be executed (martyred) over the charge. He confesses to being guilty of witchcraft, but withdraws the confession when the judges demand he testify against others (notably his devout neighbor Rebecca Nurse) and make a public display of his guilt. Ultimately, John Proctor is hanged.

Giles Corey

Giles is a friend of John Proctor who is very concerned about his own land, which he knows Thomas Putnam is trying to steal by getting the girls to accuse Giles' wife, Martha, of witchcraft. Giles learns this from an anonymous source, whom he declines to name, as he knows that this person would be persecuted. He is subjected to being pressed by stones when he refuses to plea "aye or nay" to the charge of witchcraft. The character of Giles Corey is based on a real person of the same name. His wife was hanged due to the witchcraft accusations. 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, as explained in the following quote from Elizabeth Proctor:

He were not hanged. He would not answer yes or no 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.

Giles' reason for holding out so long is because as long as he did not answer yes or no, his children would inherit his estate.

Rebecca Nurse

Rebecca Nurse is a well-respected member of the community, married to Francis Nurse. She is the voice of reason and compassion in the play. Having had many grandchildren, she is a foil for Mrs. Putnam, whose children all died in childbirth and who is anxious to blame Betty and Ruth's "ailment" on witchcraft. Rebecca later faces John Proctor in Act 4. Since he refuses to condemn his friends (Rebecca among them), he rips up his 'confession' and dies a martyr.

Reverend John Hale

John Hale is a minister from Beverly, Massachusetts. Reverend Samuel Parris invites him to Salem to examine Betty, Parris' daughter. He is depicted as a young minister who studied witchcraft and other demonic arts. As a devout Christian, Hale wishes to seek out the witches and 'save their souls.' Upon witnessing the horrors of the witch trials in Salem and after seeing Mary Warren accuse John Proctor as a witch, Hale famously declares "I quit this court!". In reality, Hale was in his mid-fifties when the witch trials commenced.

Elizabeth Proctor

John Proctor's wife. She is accused of witchcraft, and is only saved from death because she is pregnant during the hysteria. Abigail hates her for being Proctor's wife, and for keeping Proctor's heart. By the end of the play Elizabeth acknowledges that her own coldness towards her husband led to the fateful affair. By the end Elizabeth allows her husband to die the honorable death he sought, saying she would not take away his goodness.

Ezekiel Cheever

George Herrick/John Willard

Judge John Hathorne

Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth

Danforth is pretentious, officious and selfish, a judge whose primary loyalty is to himself and to his position. Seen by Miller as being the "true" villain of the piece, the author described his version of Danforth accordingly in a New York Times interview:

... [t]he rule-bearer, the man who always guards the boundaries which, if you insist on breaking through them, have the power to destroy you. His "evil" is more than personal, it is nearly mythical. He does more evil than he knows how to do; while merely following his nose he guards ignorance, he is man's limit.

In real life, Danforth was a magistrate and leading figure in the colony at the time of the Salem witch trials, but did not sit on the Court of Oyer and Terminer, but rather on the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature, which passed down no death sentences. In fact he is recorded as being critical of the conduct of the trials, and played a role in bringing them to an end.

Casts

Original 1953 Broadway cast:^[8][9]

In June 1953 Miller recast the production, simplified the "pitiless sets of rude buildings" and added a scene.^[9][10]

Boo Alexander — Betty Parris
Jacqueline Andre - Tituba
Fred Stewart – Rev. Samuel Parris
Madeleine Sherwood – Abigail Williams
Barbara Stanton – Susanna Walcott
Jane Hoffman – Mrs Ann Putnam
Raymond Bramley – Thomas Putnam
Dorothy Joliffe – Mercy Lewis
Jennie Egan – Mary Warren
Arthur Kennedy — John Proctor
Jean Adair — Rebecca Nurse
Joseph Sweeney — Giles Corey
E. G. Marshall — Rev. John Hale
Beatrice Straight — Elizabeth Proctor
Graham Velsey – Francis Nurse
Don McHenry – Ezekiel Cheever
George Mitchell — Marshall Herrick
Philip Coolidge – Judge Hathorne
Walter Hampden — Deputy-Gov. Danforth
Adele Fortin – Sarah Good
Donald Marye – Hopkins
The production was directed by Jed Harris and produced by Kermit Bloomgarden.

2002 Broadway revival cast:^[11]
Liam Neeson – John Proctor
Laura Linney – Elizabeth Proctor
Brian Murray – Deputy Governor Danforth
John Benjamin Hickey – Reverend John Hale
Christopher Evan Welch – Reverend Parris
Angela Bettis – Abigail Williams
Tom Aldredge – Giles Corey
Stephen Lee Anderson – Hopkins
Kristen Bell – Susanna Wallcott
Jennifer Carpenter – Mary Warren
Betsy Hogg – Betty Parris
J.R. Horne – Judge Hathorne
Patrice Johnson – Tituba
Sevrin Anne Mason – Mercy Lewis
Paul O'Brien – Thomas Putnam
Jeanna Paulsen – Ann Putnam
Frank Raiter – Francis Nurse
Dale Soules – Sarah Good/voice of Martha Corey
Helen Stenborg – Rebecca Nurse
Henry Stram – Ezekiel Cheever
Jack Willis – Marshal Herrick

Historical accuracy

In 1953, the year the play debuted, Miller wrote, "The Crucible is taken from history. No character is in the play who did not take a similar role in Salem, 1692."^[12] This statement does not bear close scrutiny. Miller seems to have made both deliberate changes and accidental mistakes. As an example of a deliberate change, Williams' age was increased from 11 or 12^[13] to 17, probably to add credence to the backstory of Proctor's affair with Abigail. John Proctor himself was 60 years old in 1692, but portrayed as much younger in the play, probably also to add credence to the backstory.^[14][15]

Miller claimed, in A note on the historical accuracy of this play, that "while there were several judges of almost equal authority, I have symbolized them all in Hathorne and Danforth", which again does not bear close scrutiny.^[14] He blurs the line between the historical Danforth and a figure who does not appear in the play, William Stoughton. Both were subsequent Deputy Governors, but Stoughton was the strong and forceful leader of the trials, always ready to sign an order of execution, as well as an ally of Cotton Mather. Stoughton ordered further deliberations after the jury initially acquitted Rebecca Nurse. He refused to ever acknowledge that the trials had been anything other than a success, and was infuriated when Governor Phips (whose wife, somehow, had been named as a possible witch) ended the trials for good and released the prisoners.^[16]

Danforth did not sit on the Court of Oyer and Terminer. In fact he is recorded as being critical of the conduct of the trials, and played a role in bringing them to an end.^[17] In the play, Thomas and especially Ann Putnam are disconsolate over the fact that only one of their children has survived to adolescence. In real life, the Putnams (who both died in 1699) were survived by ten of their twelve children, including Ann Jr., who, in 1706, issued perhaps the most heartfelt apology of any accuser. Thomas Putnam's conduct during the witch trial hysteria has been amply documented to have been almost entirely due to financial motivations and score-settling, something the play only makes reference to after introducing the Putnams' fictional deceased offspring as a deus ex machina.^[18][19]

In the 1953 essay, Journey to The Crucible, Miller writes of visiting Salem and feeling like the only one interested in what really happened in 1692.^[20] However, a long line of historians before Miller had attempted to record and tease apart the complexities of what took place at Salem, and certain battle lines had long before been drawn: Calef vs. Mather; Upham vs. Poole, skeptics or scholars vs. the faithful and the religious establishment. Miller's cursory and limited scholarship regarding the trials are lamentable, given the squabbling that has long taken place over various interpretations of the numerous details and facts. Many of Miller's characters were based on people who had little in the public record other than their statements from the trials, but others survived to expand, recant, or comment on the role they played at Salem, including jurors, accusers, survivors, and judges.^[21] Parris issued his first in a series of apologies November 26, 1694 and was removed from his position in 1697.^[22] In 1698, Hale finished composing a lengthy essay about Salem that was reprinted by Burr in 1914.^[23]

Language of the period

The play's action takes place 70 years after the community arrived as settlers from Britain. The people on whom the characters are based would have retained strong regional dialects from their home country. Miller gave all his characters the same colloquialisms, such as "Goody" or "Goodwife", and drew on the rhythms and speech patterns of the King James Bible to achieve the effect of historical perspective he wanted.^[1]

Title

Miller originally called the play Those Familiar Spirits,^[24] before renaming it as The Crucible. The word "crucible" is contextually defined as a container in which metals or other substances are subjected to high temperatures. Each character is metaphorically a metal subjected to the heat of the surrounding situation. The characters whose moral standards prevail in the face of death, such as John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse, symbolically refuse to sacrifice their principles or to falsely confess.

Adaptations

Film

The play was first adapted for film as The Crucible (1957) (also titled Hexenjagd or Les Sorcières de Salem), a joint Franco-East German film production by Belgian director Raymond Rouleau with a screenplay adapted by Jean-Paul Sartre, and by Miller himself as The Crucible (1996), 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. In 2014 The Old Vic's production of The Crucible which starred Richard Armitage and directed by Yaël Farber was filmed and distributed to cinemas across the UK and Ireland in December 2014.^[25]

Opera

The play was adapted by composer Robert Ward as an opera, The Crucible, which was first performed in 1961 and received the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Music Critics Circle Citation.

Television

The play has been presented several times on television. One notable 1968 production starred George C. Scott as John Proctor, Colleen Dewhurst (Scott's wife at the time) as Elizabeth Proctor, Melvyn Douglas as Thomas Danforth, and Tuesday Weld as Abigail Williams. The RSC stage production, seen in London's West End in 2006, was recorded for the V&A Theatre & Performance Department's National Video Archive of Performance.

See also

• The Devils
• McCarthyism

References

1. Blakesley (1992, xv).
2. Loftus (1957).
3. Abbotson (2005, 78) and Atkinson (1953).
4. "The Crucible". Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved November 27, 2008.
5. Roudané (1987, 24).
6. Wilmeth and Bigsby (1998, 415).
7. Bloom (2008, 10).
8. Abbotson, Susan C.W. (2007). "The Crucible—First Performance". Critical companion to Arthur Miller: a literary reference to his life and work. New York: Infobase. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-8160-6194-5.
9. Atkinson, Brooks (January 23, 1953). "The Crucible". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
10. Atkinson, Brooks (July 2, 1953). "AT THE THEATRE; Arthur Miller's The Crucible in a New Edition With Several New Actors and One New Scene". New York Times.
11. "The Crucible, Virginia Theatre". ibdb.com. Retrieved October 21, 2011.
12. Miller, Arthur (February 8, 1953). "Journey to 'The Crucible'". The New York Times. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
13. Lawson, Deodat. Further Account of the Tryals. (appended to Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World in a subsequent ed. published in London in 1693)
14. Full Text, marshfield.k12.wi.us; accessed October 29, 2015.
15. "Abigail's Age Has Been Raised", hoydenabouttown.com, June 26, 2012; accessed September 7, 2015.
16. Mather, Cotton (October 1692). Intro to Wonders of the Invisible World. Boston.
17. Calef, Robert (1700). More Wonders of the Invisible World. London, UK. (included in Burr (1914), abridged but with a highly useful index).
18. Bower, Glenn. Just a Family History, books.google.com; accessed December 25, 2014.
19. Boyer, Paul S. (1974), Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Harvard University Press, pp. 133–140, retrieved March 24, 2013
20. Miller, Arthur (February 8, 1953). "Journey to The Crucible". The New York Times.
21. Calef, Robert (1700). More Wonders of the Invisible World. London, UK.
22. Upham, Charles W. Salem Witchcraft, Volumes=I and II, Appendix IV.
23. Burr, George Burr (1914). Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases.
24. "Those Familiar Spirits" (PDF). Retrieved December 23, 2014.
25. The Crucible Onscreen, thecrucibleonscreen.com; accessed December 23, 2014.

Sources

• Abbotson, Susan C.W. (2005). Masterpieces of 20th-century American Drama. Westport, CT: Greenwood. ISBN 0-313-33223-1.
• Atkinson, Brooks (January 23, 1953). "Review of The Crucible". The New York Times.
• Blakesley, Maureen (1992). The Crucible, a Play in Four Acts. Heinemann Plays ser. Oxford. ISBN 0-435-23281-9.
• Bloom, Harold (2008). Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Chelsea House. ISBN 978-0-7910-9828-8.
• Loftus, Joseph A. (June 2, 1957). "Miller Convicted in Contempt Case". The New York Times.
• Miller, Arthur (1992). "A Note on the Historical Accuracy of the Play", in Blakesley (1992, page xvii).
• Ram, Atma (1988). Perspectives on Arthur Miller. Abhinav. ISBN 978-81-7017-240-6.
• Roudané, Matthew, ed. (1987). Conversations with Arthur Miller. Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi. ISBN 978-0-87805-323-0.
• Wilmeth, Don B. & C. W. E. Bigsby, eds. (1998). The Cambridge History of American Theatre 3. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-67985-5.

Bibliography

Editions

• Miller, Arthur The Crucible (Harmondsworth: The Viking Press, 1971); ISBN 0-14-02-4772-6 (edited with an introduction by Gerald Weales. Contains the full text based on the Collected Plays, and various critical essays)
• Nilan, Jack. "McCarthyism and the Movies". Retrieved February 16, 2016.

External links

• The Crucible at the Internet Broadway Database
• The Crucible at the Internet Broadway Database
• The Crucible (1957 film) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Crucible (1996 film) at the Internet Movie Database
• The Crucible (Literature Study Guide). SparkNotes.
• "The Crucible (Study Guide)". Shmoop.