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The Crucible
Explanatory Notes
on The Crucible by Cecilia Liu. Oct, 2001
In the prose commentaries throughout the drama, Miller offers physical,
psychological, and historical information that would aid directors and
actors to think through the play.
By opening his play with a scene of a man praying next to an inert young
girl on a sick bed, Miller immediately creates a moon of tense urgency.
Tituba’s line, “My Betty not goin’ die….”, sharpens the anxiety.
Because many characters in the play have something at stake in Betty’s
illness, they have come to the Parris home for news. Once assembled, the
characters interact, leading to the electrifying conclusion of Act I.
Through Parris’ line of questioning with Abigail, audiences learn what
Betty’s presumed ailment is, how it may have come about, and why Parris is
eager to discover the facts first and to quiet the affair.
When the Putnams enter to inquire of Betty’s health, they compound the
tension because their young daughter suffers from a similar malady. Unlike
Parris, however, the Putnams want to announce to the town that their child
has been bewitched, while to keep his post Parris wants to discount
witchcraft altogether.
John Proctor has admitted to his wife that he has been unfaithful with
young Abigail. Although he has renounced the relationship and has since
remained true to Elizabeth, she refuses to trust him or to forgive him.
As the bailiffs come to get Elizabeth, they tell of the numerous warrants
they have been ordered to serve on that day alone.
Hathorne and Danforth are determined to receive respect commensurate with
their deadly power to convict people accused of witchcraft. Parris
meanwhile uses the trials to clear his own reputation by arguing against
the townspeople he considers his detractors. The judges insist on every
letter of the law, even when justice may not be well served. Parris is
eager to hear only those witnesses who support his position, and he
refuses to listen to any evidence which would exonerate his detractors.
Once Abigail is brought into the anteroom to argue with Mary Warren and
Proctor, we have the climactic confrontation of the play.
Proctor and Giles seek to have Mary Warren’s evidence refuting Abigail
introduced into the proceedings. But the judges, Parris, and Abigail
declare their own accuracy and righteousness because they already have
committed themselves to their stories. For them to deny their earlier
testimony and verdicts now would constitute an admission that they were
wrong earlier.
Once incarcerated—and beaten down by the evil conspiracy of the false
witnesses and town authorities—Proctor ruminates on his sinfulness,
especially his infidelity with Abigail. In large part he blames his and
Elizabeth’s predicaments on his lechery. Proctor also debates whether or
not he should falsely admit to associating with demons in order to stay
alive,
By the final act, during her last meeting with Proctor, Elizabeth
concludes that she also has to bear the blame for Proctor’s marital
wandering. She explains to him that she is in no position to forgive him
or to suggest what he should do. He must decide for himself.
When enough level-headed citizens like Proctor refused to go along with
the trails any longer, then the pendulum swung over and the trials were
disbanded. Such a process had just occurred in nearby Andover, to the
dismay of Danforth and Parris.
Ultimately, after vacillating on the question, Proctor decides to remain
true to his own conscience by not lying to save his life. He will not
pretend that he has been involved in sorcery just to stay alive.
When Proctor refuses to give in to the hysteria in Salem, he shows others
that his name—his reputation—means more to him than his life. Nor can the
courts use an admission from Proctor to strengthen their position in the
community, thereby weakening their authority.
Proctor’s decision not to falsely confess gives encouragement to the other
condemned prisoners and helps them to face their fates with greater
dignity. The court prosecutors, on the other hand, sense that the strength
of their grip on affairs has been broken and that the trials are in
jeopardy. Elizabeth welcomes Proctor’s decision because it confirms that
he has regained personal pride.
Symbolically, Miller couples Proctor’s hanging with the rise of a new dawn
to signal the start of a fresh new era.
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An Entire Society Seized by Uncontrollable Madness
The violence of the mob becomes both the consequence and the source of the
pain and confusion behind the eyes of the girl in the close-up. Images
feed one another in an spiral of cause and effect that exactly reflects
the upstoppable momentum of the witch-hunt, where individual betrays lead
to collective panic, which in turn provokes further betrayals. So from the
opening scene, our eyes move repeatedly from the private to the public,
and from the cause to the consequence—from the eyes of the obsessed
teenage girl to the whole gang of them dancing naked in the woods (in the
film), bursting with a sexuality that Salem proves unable to contain; from
Tituba, terrified and vengeful as she identifies the witches, to the orgy
of false confession she elicits from the girls; from the village mob,
which drags innocent women from their homes, to Proctor at work on his
farm, feeding the frenzy in town by doggedly refusing to come forward with
the information that could put a stop to it; from the fury of the trials
to Putnam, poised to redirect that fury toward his neighbors and kill them
for their land.
These juxtapositions set out to capture the visceral excitement generated
by the spectacle of an entire society seized by uncontrollable madness.
The play speaks directly about the bigotry of religious fundamentalists
across the globe, about communities torn apart by accusations of child
abuse, about the rigid intellectual orthodoxies of college campuses—there
is no shortage of contemporary Salems ready to cry witchcraft. The
Crucible has outlived Joe McCarthy (Please notice line 6 in that page:
fony => forty), and has acquired a universal urgency shared only by
stories that tap primal truths.
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“Paradise Lost”
When the Puritans first arrived to create settlements that were to be “as
a city on a hill,” Salem was meant to be an example to the rest of
mankind. There is a marvelously austere beauty to northern Massachusetts
that, however tough conditions may be in the winter, promises a
redefinition of Eden. Pioneers geographically as well as spiritually, the
Puritans carved out their piece of Heaven on a narrow strip between the
ocean stretching east and the boundless American wilderness stretching
west. Salem Village, where the events of 1692 took place, was in fact a
mile or so inland (Salem Town was a harbor town, as it still is), whereas
in the movie, the village has constant sight of the sea, as if to
accentuate the insecurity of immigrant stock. The witch-hunt was not a
function of the adversity of the Puritan lifestyle. On the contrary, The
Crucible is Paradise Lost (albeit a sparse Paradise, devoid of vanity),
and the presence of the Devil in Salem is a consequence of the demand to
live the perfect life.
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Arthur Miller’s “Weight of Truth” in The Crucible
One of the more intriguing historical events Arthur miller included in The
Crucible was Giles Corey’s refusal to answer his indictment for witchcraft
in order to preserve his land for his sons’ inheritance. In punishment,
Corey was pressed with great stones, still refusing to confess to
witchery. Corey died, still in defiance, uttering as his last words, “More
Weight.” Miller assigns great significance to Corey’s words for he uses
them in Act 4 at a decisive moment for his protagonist, John Proctor. In
hearing about Giles’s death, Proctor repeats Corey’s last words, as if to
consider their meaning for himself. In fact, Miller intimately connects
the word “weight” to the theme of the play by employing it ten times
throughout the four acts. Tracing the repetition “weight” in The Crucible
reveals how the word supports one of the play’s crucial themes: how an
individual’s struggle for truth often conflicts with society.
… Miller’s thematic use of weight is intimately connected to the conflicts
that occur when an individual’s struggle to know truth opposes society’s
understanding of it. For the dramatic tension of the play is based on the
clashes of truth between those characters who profess to speak it, those
who profess it, those who live it and those who die for it.
[For example] … in the first scene: Reverend Parris, trying to discover
the cause of his daughter Betty’s unnatural sleeping fit, pleads with, and
then threatens, his niece Abigail:
Now tell me true, Abigail. And I pray you fell the weight of truth upon
you, for now my ministry’s at stake, my ministry and perhaps your cousin’s
life.
Parris’s appeal to Abigail to “feel the weight of truth” contains many
thematic implications. On one level, Parris’s use of weight as
“importance” or “seriousness” appeals to Abigail on a personal level,
since her uncle’s ministry and her cousin’s life are at stake. On another
level, because Parris invokes his ministry in connection with the “weight
of truth,” the religious connotation is clear. If Abigail felt the weight
of religious truth, she would confess to Parris about the abominations
performed in the forest, thereby releasing her from the heaviness of
falsehood, sin, guilt, and the power of Satan. On another level, Miller
clearly establishes negative connotations of the “weight of truth.” For
there is no doubt that Parris threatens Abigail with all the heaviness of
his ministry, and the severe power of theocracy that it represents for
Abigail and the inhabitants of Salem Village—a power whose weight and
truth we see unleashed in the play.
When Reverend Hale enters with half a dozen heavy books, the reader and
audience readily perceive the growing conflict between Church and State in
the play. What marks Hale’s mission and his importance as a character is
that he truly believes in the books’ authority. His eventual judgment that
private vengeance fuels many of the witchcraft accusations illustrates the
difference between the truth of religion and the truth of law. We see the
hypocrisy of a religious system which bases the truth on nothing but the
words of young girls. We see that actual authority and weight lie in the
secular law that these religious texts are going to put in motion to crush
innocent people.
In Act II we see the weighty power of the magistrates’ civil law is based
on the truth of religious dogma. This connection between law and religion
is reinforced by Mary Warren, the servant girl in the Proctors, when she
comes home after spending a long day at the court proceedings. Clearly,
the exposure of witches to the community is the work of God and religion,
but it is equally the work of the community in its legal entity to dispose
of such witchcraft.
The character who best signifies the power of law is Judge Danforth. In
Act III Danforth in his role as Deputy Judge represents the height of
power in Massachusetts. When Proctor and Francis Nurse are attempting to
prove the falseness of the accusations against their wives, Nurse remarks
to Danforth: “I never thought to say it to such a weight judge, but you
are deceived.” Nurse’s words exhibit how Danforth should be the arbiter of
religious and civil truth, discerning between the accusations and defenses
that are made. This scene illustrates how tenuous is the relationship
between law and religion, and how the law has superseded religion; thus,
the audience perceives the hypocrisy of the religious and legal truth.
The conflict between Hale as a “minister of the Lord” and Danforth as the
“arbiter of justice” reaches a climax in this scene, since Hale has
increasingly come to doubt the truth of the girls’ claims. This scene
culminates with Hale’s realization that the civil law is out of control,
and he denounces the proceedings after the examination and arrest of
Proctor by Danforth.
Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials to show how people are blinded to
truth. David Levin in “Salem Witchcraft in Recent Fiction and Drama” cites
as examples the change in Hale from his belief in truth in the beginning
of the play to his remorseful plea to the innocent victims to confess
falsely. We can see the irony of how Abigail’s lies are taken as truth,
and how Proctor’s truths are taken as lies.
In Act IV, Parris exhibits his fear at the impending executions of Proctor
and Rebecca Nurse. On one level, the weight that Parris refers to is the
influence that Proctor and Nurse have because of their social status in
the community. On another level, their weight connotes the religious
weight of truth that Parris earlier has invoked. The irony lies in the
“righteous prayer” he fears Rebecca could send. For the audience now
understands the falseness of Parris’ weight of truth, and that Rebecca and
John have been empowered with their own weight of truth and righteousness.
The weight of Rebecca and John becomes the threat to Parris.
In this scene, the same weight is about to crash John Proctor as well. In
his repetition of Corey’s words he seems to understand their significance
for Giles, yet struggles to understand their significance for himself.
Because of his affair with Abigail and its effect on his relationship with
Elizabeth, his Christian character, his soul and his conscience, he does
not consider himself the fearsome man like Corey or the saint like
Rebecca. He is willing to confess because he does not think he possesses
the great weight they have.
Ultimately, John Proctor discovers the “Shred of goodness” in himself: the
weight of truth of his name and character. Significantly, Parris applies
the word “weight” to Proctor’s name after John has confessed:
It is a great service, sir. It is a weighty name; it will strike the
village that Proctor confess. I beg you, let him sign it. …
Proctor comes to understand not the weightiness of his name for the
village, but the weightiness of it for himself. His name is the only truth
that Proctor knows; t is the only item that he knows still bears weight,
as parries has indicated. For Proctor, a man’s name represents the weight
of his existence in the world. A name is not connected to his piety or his
spirituality. Thus, he dies with the goodness and weight of his name. Note
that his last words to Elizabeth connect to the power of weight: “Show
honor now, show a stony heart and sink them with it.” The weight of truth
sets Proctor, Elizabeth, and Massachusetts free.
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Woks Consulted:
Ferres, John H. ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of “The Crucible.”
Englewood Cliffs, 1972.
Levin, David. “Salem Witchcraft in Recent Fiction and Drama.” The
Crucible, Text
and Criticism. Ed. Gerald Weales. New York, 1986.
Marino, Stephen. “Arthur Miller’s ‘Weight of Truth’ in The Crucible.”
Modern
Drama 38.4 (1995): 488-95.
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Chinese Essay: 亞瑟˙米勒的「熔爐」與對麥卡錫事件的迴應 (一九五０年 ~ 一九五四年)
--摘自 張靜二譯著《亞瑟˙米勒的戲劇研究》，書林出版，1989。11-14頁
一九五一年，韓戰停火，美國人轉而注意國內的共黨活動。當時美國國內的共黨最多不過七萬五千人，人數還在遞減中。早在一九四九年間，就有十一名美共領袖因破壞史密斯法案（Smith
Act）而鋃鐺入獄，多名被控從事共黨活動的外人也遭當局遞解出境；許多州則透過立法來規定參加顛覆的公教人員可以撤職。要求宣布共黨為非法團體，並調查不忠行為的呼聲，已高唱入雲。至此，恐慌與疑慮的氣氛已然瀰漫全國。言論、出版、集會以及表示異議等基本人權也橫遭剝奪；許多無辜者更是蒙受不白之冤。杜魯門（Harry
S. Truman）政府雖竭力抑止這股邪風的吹襲，卻是束手無策。當時，由威斯康辛州選出的參議員麥卡錫（Senator Joseph R.
McCarthy）包藏禍心，乘機製造事端、栽誣無辜，指稱國務院窩藏共黨，控告霍普金斯校長拉提摩爾（Owen Lattimore）當過俄國駐美的高級間諜，譴責國務卿馬歇爾（George
C.
Marshall）縱容共黨從事顛覆活動，又肆意攻擊大使、編輯、參議員，並謾罵政府的行政部門，造成了所謂的麥卡錫風潮（McCarthyism）。其後，麥氏雖於一九五四年因誣告遭受申斥，從此銷聲匿跡，但由他所引發的風潮仍餘波盪漾，數年不止，致使政府的威信大受打擊，美國在國外也蒙受了無可彌補的損失。
「推銷員之死」在百老匯演過一個月後不久，米勒依挪威劇作家易卜生（Henrik Ibsen）「國民公敵」（En Folkefiende）改編的戲，首於一九五０年十二月二十八日晚間在紐約廣丘劇院（Broadhurst
Theater）公演。這齣戲疑係針對紐約市政的腐敗現象而發，加上演出時正值麥卡錫風潮方興未艾之際，以致被認為有唱反調之嫌。因此儘管當時米勒的聲名正盛，演員的陣容也十分堅強，卻不過勉強演了三十六場便匆匆結束。嗣後，改編過的「國民公敵」跟「天之驕子」(The
Man Who Had All the Luck)同樣沒有收入米勒的「戲劇集」中，僅於演出的同年由紐約維京出版社（The Viking
Press）印行，顯示米勒也不視之為他的主要作品之一。
其實，真正隱射麥卡錫風潮的應是「熔爐」（The Crucible）一劇。米勒在密大就讀期間就看過一六九二年麻省撒冷（Salem,
Massachusetts）地區審巫的一些記載，也很感興趣，但直到麥卡錫風潮橫掃全美，造成人心惶惶、草木皆兵的局面，才想到以此為寫作的素材。這股風潮固然在政治層面上造成極大的困擾，但米勒留意的則是它所孕育的「怪異與神秘」氣氛。這種氣氛顯然是由一些可笑的有心人士在幕後操縱，豈料竟能引人思想癱瘓，鎮日提心吊膽，生活在恐懼之中。世道人心丕變；連多年的熟人迎面走過，也能視若無睹。米勒認為民眾所以會有這些反應，部分是由於個人的罪惡感所致；只要當眾承認這種潛藏的罪惡感，恐懼便可獲得紓解。他認為，在這種情況下，「良心不再是個人的問題，而是屬於國家行政管轄的範圍」；他又說：「我親眼看到別人交出良心，並且謝謝對方讓他們有機會這麼做」。這正是當年撒冷(Salem)審巫事件的翻版！
為了使人物的刻畫與情節的安排詳實而逼真起見，米勒於一九五二年春天親自驅車前往撒冷(Salem)，到當地的法院翻閱檔案，並訪問有關的田舍、街坊、棧房、店鋪、絞架等。經過這番實地觀察以後，米勒才開始動筆。他保留事件的基本架構。有時運用審判資料；有時則為了創造更有自覺意識的人物而不惜改變史實。譬如，原記錄中，法官所說的話太過幼稚而可笑，因此不能不加以改動，以提高可信度；有如原紀錄中有多位法官，為增強戲劇效果，也簡化成一位。
「熔爐」一劇仍由布侖嘉頓製作，由哈利士（Jed
Harris）導演，於一九五三年正月二十二日開演，至同年七月十一日收場為止，總共演出一百九十七場，還算差強人意。當年的「推銷員之死」曾獲普立茲獎（Pulitzer
Prize）、紐約劇評人圈內獎（New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award）、玻利獎（Antoinette Perry
Award）、美國報業公會獎（american Newspaper Guild Award）、劇院俱樂部獎（Theater Club
Award）以及道諾遜獎（Donaldson
Award）；「熔爐」則僅獲玻利獎和道諾遜獎。批評家對這齣為回應麥卡錫風潮而寫、也在政治栽誣最盛期間開演的戲，大抵貶多於褒。他們多半帶著蒙上濃厚政治色彩的眼鏡來觀賞。少數給予讚揚的指它勇於對抗麥卡錫風潮；貶抑者則多以其題材忤觸政局而刻意挑剔，說它是個「冷峻」而「別具用心」的「政治寓言」（political
allegory），根本就未達藝術水準。一般說來，一齣戲一旦首演失利，此後便很難再獲肯定。然而，五年之後，政治氣氛翻轉；「熔爐」在百老匯外重演，竟獲得各方的交相讚譽。從前嚴加指責的評家，現在卻說它是一齣散發「熱力」的傑作。他們以為劇本經過修改；實則根據米勒說，全劇原封未動，而演員的素質也未見得比早先的好。無論如何，重演的「熔爐」不再是什麼寓言，而是一齣道道地地的舞台劇了。「熔爐」在紐約連演兩年；也分別於一九五四年、一九五六年和一九六五年在倫敦公演。其中尤以一九五六年在英國國家劇院演出時由勞侖斯奧立弗（Laurence
Oliver）領銜主演，最令米勒滿意。也因而使他對這齣戲更具信心。
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Relevant Sites
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Other related sites for your reference:
Joe McCarthy
Salem
Giles Corey
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