‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller
The Brief
Discuss how meaning is generated and communicated in performance through a critical analysis of ‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller which was performed at The Gielgud Theatre, London, Friday 31st March 2006
‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller
Hysteria is a key theme in The Crucible and Arthur Miller’s objective is to show how hysteria can tear apart a community, be it a small village in 17th century America or a whole country in 1950’s America. Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953 at the height of McCarthyism.
He himself was blacklisted by Hollywood when he refused to testify in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) run by Junior U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy, which sought to route out Communists. Miller began studying the original court records of the witch trials, which took place in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. Immediately he saw the parallels between what had happened then and the role hysteria had played and the hysteria prevalent at the time of the McCarthy ‘witch hunts’ which had led to the many of his left-wing writer and poet friends being blacklisted for being Communists.
In an interview with Roy Hattersley Miller said that he realised that "the nation was going mad and drowning in a sea of hysteria" when McCarthy accused former US Secretary of State General George C Marshall of being a communist.
In The Crucible, hysteria enables people to believe that their neighbours, who they have always thought of as good people, are committing horrible crimes such as being in league with the devil and killing livestock and even babies. It also forces those who are falsely accused of witchcraft to be faced with an unimaginable decision, either be hanged for being a witch or falsely confess and spend the rest of your life in jail. Some characters in the play deflect the accusations of witchcraft against them by accusing others and so perpetuate and deepen the hysteria. For instance, Tituba - Reverend Parris’ slave - is first accused of being a witch by Abigail. Abigail claims that Tituba has been using evil forces on her and making her drink blood and laugh in church. At which point Thomas Putnam declares, “This woman must be hanged”. Tituba is so petrified at this point that she admits that she was tempted by the devil and that she turned her back on him but that she saw other women from Salem with the devil. She then begins to accuse other women of being in league with the devil.
The point at which the hysteria first emerges in the play is when Betty Parris and Ruth Putnam are taken ill after being caught dancing in the forest at night. Rumours quickly start up that witchcraft is being practised in Salem and unconfirmed stories are spread. Ann Putnam is heard to say in Act I (P21) “Mr Collins saw her [Betty] goin’ over Ingersoll’s barn, and come down light as bird, he say!”
Many of the townspeople of Salem use the growing hysteria in the town for their own gain. For example, servant girl Abigail Williams is angry with John Proctor for ending their secret affair that took place when she was servant to him and his wife. Abigail is also angry with his wife Elizabeth for sacking her after she discovers the illicit affair. Therefore, she accuses Elizabeth of being a witch with the aim of seeing her thrown in jail so that she can have John to herself. Elizabeth prophecises this herself in Act II (P61) when she says “I am sure she [Abigail] does – and thinks to kill me, then to take my place”. Abigail also uses the accusation towards Elizabeth and the other townspeople to protect herself from being punished for dancing in the forest and from being accused of being a witch herself. As Betty says in Act I (P26) “You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!” to which Abigail viciously slaps her face and replies (P26) “Shut it! Now shut it!”.
Other people use the hysteria for other purposes. Reverend Parris feels that he is not respected by a great deal of the townspeople and he seeks to remedy this, if only for a short time, by making scapegoats of those who might choose to question his authority, such as Proctor and Giles Corey. He also redirects the accusations of witchcraft which are first made against his daughter Betty to others in the town. This is after Thomas Putnam suggests in Act I (P24) “Wait for no one to charge you – declare it yourself. You have discovered witchcraft –“.
The other girls in the town who follow Abigail in accusing others of witchcraft (Mary Warren, Mercy Lewis, Susanna Walcott etc) initially do so because they are both scared of being punished for dancing and casting charms and are also scared of what Abigail might do to them if they do not follow her lead. As Mary Warren says in Act II (P74) “She’ll kill me for sayin’ that!” when Proctor says she must tell the truth to the court about Abigail. In addition, the girls have a hard and boring life working as servants and they see this as a chance to add some excitement to their lives and to be raised above their lowly servant status. As Mary says in Act II (P58), “I am an official of the court”.
Ann Putnam has lost seven babies and enlists Tituba to conjure up their spirits in order to find out who is responsible for their deaths. She does this to find out who is responsible. Ann later accuses Rebecca Nurse of using witchcraft to murder her babies. Thomas Putnam (Ann’s husband) is angry with Rebecca’s husband Francis as he had sold some land to Proctor which he – wrongly – believed was left in his Grandfather’s will. As Putnam says in Act I (P36), He (Francis) had no right to sell it. “It stands clear in my Grandfather’s will” to which Proctor retorts “Your Grandfather had a habit of willing land”. We can see from this that both Francis and Proctor dislike Putnam. However, Putnam gets his revenge when both Francis’ and Proctor’s wives and then Proctor himself are accused of witchcraft.
The play begins with a group of the servant girls (including Abigail and Betty) from the village of Salem dancing and casting charms in the forest at night – things that are forbidden in the strictly religious town. Reverend Parris catches them which causes his daughter Betty to take a fright and collapse. The girls are scared that they will be punished or accused of being witches. As Mary says, “Witchery’s a hangin’ error . . . . We must tell the truth”. However, rather than tell the truth Abigail instead accuses other members of town and the other girls quickly follow suit. These people are then arrested and put on trial for witchcraft.
Proctor knows that Abigail is lying and so leads a group of people - which includes Francis Nurse and Giles Corey – who speak out against the accusers as all their wives have been put on trial for witchcraft. They attempt to convince the authorities – Reverends Parris and Hale, Judge Hathorne and the Deputy Governor – that the girls are making false accusations to the court in order to cover their own backs. However, the town is run by a theocracy and those in charge believe that anyone making an attack on the court is by virtue attacking God and is therefore evil and in league with the devil.
In an attempt to prove that Abigail is lying Proctor admits to his affair with her and proclaims in Act III (P97) “I have known her, sir. I have known her”. He does this to prove that Abigail is making these false accusations out of pure spite towards him and his wife. Abigail knows that Elizabeth sacked her for having an affair with Proctor. Unfortunately, when Elizabeth is questioned about it by the Judge she attempts to cover her husband’s good name by saying that she sacked Abigail just because she was lazy. Proctor is then accused of lying about the affair for the purposes of having the witchcraft claims against Elizabeth dropped. He himself is then arrested for witchcraft.
I found the final act of the play very sad. Proctor is reunited with Elizabeth after three months apart. He is given the chance to admit that he is in league with the devil and so be spared from the gallows and see his unborn child born. He initially agrees, but when he is told to sign his name in confusion he refuses. When asked by Danforth to explain why, he cries “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! He would rather die an honest man for not telling lies than spare his own life.
The play is well written and although it runs for nearly 3 hours and over four Acts, I was gripped throughout. The characters are well rounded and three dimensional and even though we may laugh at their naivety and religious piety all the characters are firm to their beliefs.
I particularly enjoyed the irony in the scene in Act II where Reverend Hale asks Proctor to recite his commandments. It is quite telling that his wife has to remind him, (P64) “Adultery, John”. It is the only commandment that he cannot name and cleverly alludes to his affair with Abigail.
The actors successfully tell the story and are believable. For example, you feel the absolute frustration that Proctor feels at a society that believes the girls' stories and seems to have gone mad when he says in Act III (P105) “A fire, a fire is burning! . . . you are pulling Heaven down and raising up a whore!”.
It is also interesting to watch the development of Proctor’s feelings for Abigail. In Act I for example, even though seven months have passed since he ended their affair he does show some softness towards her. As he says (P29) “Abby, I may think of you softly from time to time”. Whereas by the time of the courthouse scene in Act III where he grabs Abigail’s hair and calls “Whore! Whore! you feel the pure hatred that he has for her for what she has done to him, his wife and the rest of Salem.
The only thing that slightly retracts from Iain Glen’s powerful and believable performance is his slightly muddled accent and I sometimes found myself concentrating more on his accent than on the words he was saying. It seems as if he cannot decide whether to do an East Anglian accent or an East coast American accent. However, the rest of the cast’s accents are less obtrusive as they all speak with a traditional East Anglian accent.
Michelle Terry is convincing as Mary Warren, she is a frightened little girl and your heart is wrenched at the end of Act II when she falls to the floor and repeatedly sobs (P75) “I cannot, I cannot”. When Proctor insists that she refute the claims of witchcraft against his wife Elizabeth. She is beginning to realise the price of her actions.
Trevor Peacock provides the much-needed comic relief to the play in his portrayal of Giles Corey and I particularly enjoyed the banter which took place between him and the other characters in Act I. Unfortunately, his figure becomes rather tragic when his wife Martha is arrested for witchcraft purely because he mentioned that he had seen her (P43) “readin’ of strange books?”
Abigail Williams is an orphan whose parents were murdered by Native Americans. So when she says in Act I (P26) “I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you . . . . I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down!” Elaine Cassidy delivers the line with such vitriol that you believe that Abigail is definitely capable of exactly that. She is also totally convincing during the scenes where she claims to be being attacked by Mary’s spirit, which she says has taken the form of a bird. “Oh, Mary, this is a black art to change your shape. No, I cannot, I cannot stop my mouth; it’s God’s work I do”.
Robert Bowman was well cast as Reverend Hale. When he first arrives in Salem he believes that he has been called in to use his expertise at dealing with the routing out of witches and that he is doing only good. However, throughout the course of the play we can see that his self-belief is tested and by Act IV he knows that he has been misguided when he says (P114) “There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my head!!”. He is a broken man.
The relationships between the characters were clearly defined by Miller and by the director. For instance, I believed that Proctor had no respect for Reverend Parris. The director reinforced Proctor’s distance from the rest of the townsfolk by keeping him at a distance from them. In addition, there is a distance between him and his wife during Act II and this emphasises the emotional gap between them. However, in Act IV when they are brought together again there is an outpouring of emotion and they embrace each other for the first time in the play.
The lighting and set design were excellent devices in aiding the telling the story. Firstly, the whole set is stark and there is only the minimum amount of furniture required – for example the bed where Betty sleeps or the kitchen table in the Proctor’s farmhouse. This conjured up how minimally Puritans would have lived in the 17th century. Director Dominic Cooke made a good decision in including the girls dancing in the forest at the beginning of the play as this sets the tone and atmosphere for the whole play. The trees are tall, bare and menacing and the small amount of light which is allowed to shine through and cast long shadows immediately gives the whole play a sense of impending doom. Once the forest scene has ended the forest disappears and we are presented with the bare bedroom where Betty is lying. There is only one small window in the room, which allows in a small shaft of light and this darkness along with the long shadows that are cast by the characters reinforces the sense of foreboding. Scene changes are smoothly handled and flow well as members of the cast are used to rearrange the furniture whilst all the time they sing melancholy hymns in chorus which sent shivers up my spine and maintained the feeling of doom. Also, throughout the play there is a single note played and this added to the tension. The inclusion of the fireplace, which burns in the Proctor family farmhouse kitchen, gives some much-needed warmth to these scenes and I could imagine myself sitting in front of it on a cold winter’s night after spending a long day working hard on the land.
With regard to the costumes, it is interesting to note that whilst the rest of the characters were dressed in the traditional dark, plain and washed-out clothes which reinforced their stark, minimalist puritanical lifestyle both Abigail and Proctor wore brightly-coloured costumes. Throughout the play Abigail wears a bright red dress. This signified to me temptation, danger and evil – we need to beware of this person. However, she still covers her hair a white cap. It is almost as if this is her way of trying to fool people that she is still pure and untainted. Whilst Proctor was dressed in deep brown clothes to show that he is a farmer - a man of the soil – and above all down to earth.
So in conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this production of The Crucible. I found both the storyline and the characters absorbing and feel that I was taken on an emotional ride. The hysteria and fear is palpable throughout the play and I am glad that I was not alive during this time in history.