"The Crucible" by Arthur Miller, Act One

His daughter, Betty Parris, aged ten, is lying on the bed, inert.

He believed he was being persecuted wherever he went, despite his best efforts to win people and God to his side.

He regarded them 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.

Their creed forbade anything resembling a theater or “vain enjoyment.”

Which is not to say that nothing broke into this strict and somber way of life.

That there were some jokers, however, is indicated by the practice of appointing a two-man patrol whose duty was to “walk forth in the time of God’s worship to take notice of such as either lye about the meeting house, without attending to the word and ordinances, or that lye at home or in the fields without giving good account thereof, and to take the names of such persons, and to present them to the magistrates, whereby they may be accordingly proceeded against.”

This predilection for minding other people’s business was time-honored among the people of Salem, and it undoubtedly created many of the suspicions which were to feed the coming madness.

It was also, in my opinion, one of the things that a John Proctor would rebel against, for the time of the armed camp had almost passed, and since the country was reasonably--although not wholly--safe, the old disciplines were beginning to rankle.

It stood, dark and threatening, over their shoulders night and day, for out of it Indian tribes marauded from time to time, and Reverend Parris had parishioners who had lost relatives to these heathen.

So now they and their church found it necessary to deny any other sect its freedom; lest their New Jerusalem be defiled and corrupted by wrong ways and deceitful ideas.

It was, however, an autocracy by consent, for they were united from top to bottom by a commonly held ideology whose perpetuation was the reason and justification for all their sufferings.

Evidently the time came in New England when the repressions of order were heavier than seemed warranted by the dangers against which the order was organized.

Long-held hatreds of neighbors could now be openly expressed, and vengeance taken, despite the Bible’s charitable injunctions.

He is bending to kneel again when his niece, Abigail Williams, seventeen, enters--a strikingly beautiful girl, an orphan, with an endless capacity for dissembling.

Now she is all worry and apprehension and propriety.

Now then, in the midst of such disruption, my own household is discovered to be the very center of some obscene practice. Abominations are done in the forest--

She hates me, uncle, she must, for I would not be her slave. It’s a bitter woman, a lying, cold, sniveling woman, and I will not work for such a woman!

With ill-concealed resentment at him: Do you begrudge my bed, uncle?

They will howl me out of Salem for such corruption in my house.

He undoubtedly felt it poor payment that the village should so blatantly disregard his candidate 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 witchcraft began.

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 supernatural 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.

I have spoke nothin’, but my heart has clamored intimations.

Goody Ann, it is a formidable sin to conjure up the dead!

Abigail, with hushed trepidation: How is Ruth sick?

Proctor was a farmer in his middle thirties. He need not have been a partisan of any faction in the town, but there is evidence to suggest that he had a sharp and biting way with hypocrites.

In Proctor’s presence a fool felt his foolishness instantly--and a Proctor is always marked for calumny therefore.

Mercy Lewis, both afraid of him and strangely titillated: I’d best be off.

Giles Corey, eighty-three, enters. He is knotted with muscle, canny, inquisitive, and still powerful.

Rebecca walks across the room to the bed. Gentleness exudes from her.

He was called upon to arbitrate disputes as though he were an unofficial judge, and Rebecca also enjoyed the high opinion most people had for him.

To top it all, Mrs. Putnam--who is now staring at the bewitched child on the bed--soon accused Rebecca’s spirit of “tempting her to iniquity,” a charge that had more truth in it than Mrs. Putnam could know

Proctor, familiarly, with warmth, although he knows he is approaching the edge of Giles’ tolerance with this: Is it the Devil’s fault that a man cannot say you good morning without you clap him for defamation?

when we see the steady and methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man’s worthlessness--until redeemed--the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church-state.

The Catholic Church, through its Inquisition, is famous for cultivating Lucifer as the arch-fiend, but the Church’s enemies relied no less upon the Old Boy to keep the human mind enthralled.

I have no doubt that people were communing with, and even worshiping, the Devil in Salem, and if the whole truth could be known in this case, as it is in others, we should discover a regular and conventionalized propitiation of the dark spirit.

We have all manner of licentious people in the village!

Parris, blanched: She called the Devil?

Hale, with rising exaltation: You are God’s instrument put in our hands to discover the Devil’s agents among us.

She is enraptured, as though in a pearly light.