The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 1 - Witch Hunts In Two Centuries! - Pulitzer Prizes! - Allegories Everywhere! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

The Crucible - Arthur Miller - Episode 1 - Witch Hunts In Two Centuries - Pulitzer Prizes - Allegories Everywhere!

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

 

I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit podcast.  Today is new book day, and I always love new book day.  We are starting our series on Arthur Miller and his timeless classic about human hysteria, The Crucible.  I’m particularly excited about this series because it’s both extremely historical as well as psychological, as lots of things are- but in this case- it’s heightened.  

 

For sure, The Crucible is Arthur Miller’s most produced play worldwide becoming one of America’s most popular plays in the 20th century.  Ironically, it failed at the box office in its initial production in 1953, so what does that tell you?

 

Initial box offices don’t always get it right.

 

Miller would say, almost never. He was very critical to how we organize theater in this country.   I watched an interview he did with Charlie Rose later in his life and he talked about the problems he saw with American theater.  It was kind of interesting to me. He complained that, as a nation, we could never get good at play writing and acting because of the financing piece.  He wished we had a national theater- I’m not saying I advocate for that idea, because I can see a lot of problems in other ways- but he did make an interesting point.   He made the analogy that if you took another profession, like plumbing or something, for example you create a plumbing company and hire people to be professional plumbers- they would have security and work continuously- finishing one starting another- seamlessly- and with each new job, they would learn to perfect their craft- obviously getting better and better all the time and the trade itself would progress in technique and so forth.  He said today, our theater does things by the job- and he said it would be like the plumbing company going out and hirng new plumbers every time they have a different job to do, and in the between time the plumbers are out of work doing something else, getting out of practice with no time or incentive to work on things that would have a long term improvements.  He says, this financial piece keeps actors from getting better, play writes from getting better, and theaters from taking chances on things that might take more than one week to get popular.  He said, doing theater project by project makes that initial box office too important because the immediate return on investment is too high.  But anyway, I hadn’t thought of it like that.  Maybe he’s right.  There’s certainly quite a bit of sequels and redundancy in the movie industry.

 

That is one great thing about researching a person who only died in 2005- which is when Miller died.  He was born in 1915 and lived until 2005- there is a lot of video footage of him, especially with his second wife, Marilyn Monroe.  

 

Oh my gosh, I know and I guess this is a good of time as any to get into a little bit of the facts about his personal and professional life, although we won’t spend too much time on that today.  We can get into the Marilyn Monroe stuff when we talk about the Mccarthy era stuff.  But for starters, Miller was a native New Yorker, originally from a well to do family who owned a manufacturing company.  Unfortunately, during the depression, his family went bankrupt and to the poor house they all went, not an uncommon depression era story inAmerica.  One fun fact about Miller’s early life for all your burgeoning students out there is that- Miller was a terrible student, which is something I always find interesting. He failed Algebra three time.

 

So there you go- there’s hope for us all- even the non-mathematical types.

 

For sure, it took him two years to raise enough money to pay for his college tuition, but He did finally go to a great school- the University of Michigan- all you Blue fans out there- (if you’re not from the US, Michigan is famous not only because it’s a prestigious university but their American football team is very good- although not as good as their SEC counterparts – if you ask me!  

 

HA!!  Well, they likely could have beat the University of Tennessee this year.

 

Ouch- why would you say something like that??

 

For those who don’t know, Christy and I are big football fans and Christy’s daughters both attend the University of Tennessee which also is a big and good school with a very historically important football team- although not so much recently.  Football rivalries never die!  Her best friend’s husband attended the University of Michigan- so she has a little personal vendetta!!  Anyway, it was at the University of Michigan that Miller started writing drama.  By 1947, he was lucky enough, fortunate to use a Machiavellian phrase- to have a play open on Broadway.  The name of that play was All My Sons.  It was an immediate hit- and there you go- back to Machiavelli, Miller, being a man of great virtue was able to maximize his opportunity.  Two years later he came out with Death of a Salesman and won the Pulitzer prize. 

 

I want take just a second to talk about that play.  I would say, most critics consider Death of a Salesman to be his most important play.  It’s been called “a modern American tragedy” maybe even the greatest play of his generation. It’s about angst, the frustrations of middle class life, maybe the death of the American dream.  It’s dark really and the main character is unheroic- and this is a big difference.   Where, the protagonist John Proctor of the crucible is heroic, Willie Lowman of Death of a Salesman is not.  Death of a Salesman is not plot driven but character driven- Biff and Willie Loman are absolutely two of the most iconic characters in modern theater- everyone remembers them.  So, Death of a Salesman has been very influenctial and critically acclaimmed, but it hasn’t been as widely produced as the crucible.  Charlies Rose in that same interview with Miller asked him what was his most important play, and Miller responded by saying well, it depends how you’re measuring.  Rose tried to get him to name Death of a Salesman or the Crucible, but Miller wouldn’t do it.  He said, well, world-wide, the Crucible is produced far more- but many people identify more with Death of a Salesman personally- so there’s that question for people who want to debate such things.  What makes a play more important?  Which of his is?  I don’t know what I would say.  I will say, I like The Crucible better.  IT’s more entertaining, but in the words of one Memphis’ greatest English teacher, Amy Nolette- Death of A Salesman is just achingly human.  

 

Yikes, well both Death of a Salesman and The Crucible are extremely famous now and both are widely produced.  Of course, The Crucible wasn’t  popular when it came out,  but looking back that likely had more to do with things way outside of the theater. Than the quality of the play itself.  This play was a victim of the political climate at the time.  People were afraid of it, in some sense.  Here’s a play where Miller is talking about hysteria surrounding the witchcraft trials in Puritan New England, but the allegorical nature of the play was obvious. He was talking about his current moment and only veiling it slightly.

 

Yes- and let me define that word  allegory for a second.  We’ve talked about this before. Lord of the Flies is an allegory, animal farm is an allegory- but just in case you haven’t listened to those series yet or are simply unfamiliar with the term, an allegory is a story that has two levels of meaning- on the first level you’re literally talking about what you are literally talking about- a door is a door, an island is an island but then there’s this second level- the symbolic level.  Lots of stories use symbols but if everything in the story is a symbol, then we have an allegory.  So, for example, in Animal Farm- the story was about animals on the literal level, but it was really about communism and specifically the Soviet Union- every animal represented something or someone else- Napoleon was Stalin, Boxer was the working man, etc..  Here, in the Crucible-we have the same thing- this play is literally about the Witch trials of the 1690s, but it’s also about the postwar climate of McCarthyism in the United States. 

 

Yes- and he had something very specific in mind, just like Orwell did.  This play is about Alger Hiss, Owen Lattimore, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as well as Joseph McCarthy.  Actors had lost their jobs- they had been canceled, to use the language of today- because they didn’t share the proper political views of people who were in power- political power, economic power, artistic power.  Innocent people were literally being convicted of crimes and sent to literal prison for opinions and associations with people that were considered bad or to use their word “un-american” a word everyone knew was bad and elite people, the nobles to get back to Machiavelli,  got to  define what it meant to be such.  In the introduction to Miller’s book, Collected Plays, Miller describes how he felt about America at that point.  He says this, “It was as though the whole country had been born anew, without a memory even of certain elemental decencies which a year or two earlier no one would have imagined could be altered, let alone forgotten.  Astounded, I watched men pass me by without a nod whom I had known rather well for years; and again, the astonishment was produced by my knowledge, which I could not give up, that terror in these people was being knowingly planned and consciously engineered, and yet that all they knew was terror.  That so interior and subjective an emotion could have been so manifestly created from without was a marvel to me.  It underlies every word in the Crucible.”  And of course, as we’ll get into during the series, Arthur Miller was investigated and called to testify before the House Committee of Un-American Activities which we’ll talk about later.  

 

Exactly, in 2000 when Miller is in his 80s, he published a book called Echoes Down the Corridor.  In that book he says this, “It would probably never have occurred to me to write a play about the Salem witch trials of 1692 had I not seen some astonishing correpondences with that calamity in the America of the late forties and early fifties..my basic need was to respond to a phenomenon which, with only a small exaggeration, one could say was paralyzing a whole generation and in an amazingly short time was dying up the habits of trust and toleration in public discourse.  I refer of course to the anticommunist rage that threatened to reach hysterical proportions and sometimes did.  I can’t remember anyone calling it an ideological war, but I think now that that is what it amounted to.  Looking back at the period, I suppose we very rapidly passed over anything like a discussion or debate and into something quite different, a hunt not alone for subversive people but ideas and even a suspect language.”  He went on to detail how one day he found a book called The Devil in Massachusetts by Marion Starkey about the Salem Witch hunts- and he saw the parallel from history to his present experience.

 

Something Machiavelli says if you will read the stories, writings and histories of the past you’ll see your current moment over and over again.

 

Exactly.  Miller had actually already heard the story of salem from studying American history in school, but because of what was going on in the United States, it struck him differently as he read about it as an adult.  He went to Salem.  And he says this, “As I stood in the stillness of the Salem courthouse, surrounded by the miasmic swirl of the images of the 1950s but with my head in 1692, what the two eras hd in common was gradually gaining definition.  It both was the menace of concealed plots, but most startling were the similarities in the rituals of defense and investigative routines.  Three hundred years apart, both presecutions were alleging memberships in a secret, disloyal group; should the accused confess, his honesty could be proved only in precisely the same way- by naming former confederates, nothing less.  Thus the informer became the very proof of the plot and the investigators necessity.”  

 

And yet, the reason why this play is likely produced all over the world, is that this is not an American phenomena- although, we’re very prone to hysteria here obviously, but it’s human one.  It’s political, but not only political- hysteria, manipulation through fear, evil people deliberately using other people’s goodness and naivete against them, the use of logical fallacies over deductive reasoning= these are universal and timeless realities of being human.  

 

True- and we get to talk about every bit of that.  This week, we’ll focus on the back history that led up to the trials chronicled in the play- the actual story of what happened in Salem.  Miller takes several liberties that add a little spice to the play that likely didn’t happen in real life, and we can point those out as we get to them- at least the obvious ones.  But it’s important to know that the people in the play are actual people and what happened to them as far as the legal system goes actually happened.  The John Proctor/ Abigail sexual plot line is of course a big a liberty- he actually changes the ages of both john and Abigail.  Abigal was younger in real life, John much older.   And although Miller defends the affair could have happened and he found a line in a transcript that maybe suggests that- it’s not part of the record.  The question of why Miller made his main character an adulterer in a Puritan town is interesting in its own right- and makes its own statement- but also is a conversation for another episode. So, are we ready to go back to the 1690s and see what New England was like in that time period- a far cry from the Renaissance of last week.

 

So true, first let’s get the geography right in our heads.  Salem is a little seaside town of about 40,000 people in Massachusetts which is in New England.  If you’re looking at a map of the United States it’s north of New York- that area.  To this day, if you go to the town website, it’s still famous for the Salem Witch Trials we’re going to be reading about in the play.  In fact, the little town gets over a million visitors a year- and they have all the markings of a place that has commercialized an event: a museum, there’s a witch brew café- all the fun stuff.  I’ve never been, but Salem is definitely on my list of places to visit.  Of course, for an American city, being founded in the 1600s is old.- we’re babies compared to India, Egypt or even Europe for that matter.  Salem was issued its charter by the English monarch in 1629.  Like most of America at the time, most people survived by farming, but Salem at this point was up and coming and there were mercantile interests- it was a seaside town and they traded cod to the West Indies starting in 1637 and that’s a big deal.  There is a fort, Fort Pickering, so it’s militarily important and if you remember, it was in the Salem Custom house that Nathaniel Hawthorne sets his story The Scarlet Letter which was the first book we ever featured. 

 

Of course, and most people rarely miss the irony of our first Puritan settlers who arrived here in the 1600s searching for religious tolerance  because their identities were being persecuted in Europe, and yet had no tolerance of their own  for the different identities of the people who were already here nor any new settlers.  And for that- history has been really hard on them- as we’re obviously going to be as well. But, as in all things,  it’s must more complicated than you might think. Isn’t it?  And unlike people think, there were good people that were also Puritans.  

 

There most certainly was-  and we can’t forget that- when we look back with the arrogance of our present moment- there is a lot of good still imbedded in the American psyche that we owe to this group of people-  but -having said that- this story- highlights a negative- and even though we are not a religious people anymore, Americans are notorious for our moral posturing- we just have a secularized way of doing it now- De Toqueville made that observation 100 years later when he said………” Americans live in a perpetual state of self applause”

 

nevertheless, in Miller’s case and he said so many times, we can use puritans as our straw man because we’re 300 years removed, but Miller’s point is that everyone- including puritans- are human- and because they also were human- they were much more complicated than any oversimplified understanding of their lives would make you think.  

 

And Miller opens his play, immediately delving into all of this complexity of character, people’s personal histories, their histories with each other-  by providing an introduction- with a narrator most productions don’t use because they are long and interrupt the flow of the story.  So, if you’re watching the play, you have a little less insight than if you’re read the Crucible.  But even if you do read the long narrator commentary, it’s a little bit like listening to someone tell you about a long family saga and it’ somewhat overwhelming- there are just so many players involved.  In fact, Miller himself worried that the play- as stripped down as he tried to make it- wouldn’t be accepted by Broadway because it has a cast of 21 different characters and several sets.  

 

For sure- and keeping the characters straight is no small feat- so we need to take baby steps- I think  it’s worth starting with the lay of the land- or the physical geography because that helps keep the alliances straight.   We should first understand that Salem is two places.  There is Salem Town and Salem Village. Today Salem village has another name- it’s called Danvers and it’s about half the size of Salem.   But, these are two distinct places and there is antagonism between the two which is at the heart of the scandal.  The witch accusations first surfaced in Salem village which is the more rural of the two.    At this time in American history things were changing- mostly for the better for the European settlers. The seaports that I mentioned were thriving especially in Salem Town.  Merchants were making money and gaining power. One particular family is the Porter family- an old family- very distinguished and very prosperous.   You can think of their Team Salem Town-  Then there is Salem Village. It was not a part of the thriving mercantile economy. It was full of farmers without trading interests, and many of them were struggling.   This is the poorer side of town. BUT, There is a second family- that’s just old and distinguished as the Porters, except  they were on the farmer side of them and their financial fortunes were in decline.  The family name for this family is– the Putnams- .  The Putnams like many in Salem Village weren’t benefiting from the economic growth.  This matters because behind the witch saga, there is a financial piece.  And one big point that even Miller brings up, is that the Putnams are losing land via an inheritance thing- and this doesn’t sit well.  So, there is a money piece that we need to keep straight.  So, we have the family feud piece, we have the financial piece but we have one more layer- we have a religious piece- the people in Salem Town were more secular- at least in their terms- by our standards they are not secular at all, but  up and coming people of Salem Town weren’t like the older generation who were committed to following all of these very strict guidelines designed to make the new world a religious safe haven, and although the changes they were in favor of today don’t seem like anything, anytime there is changing values, there’s a threat. 

 

 And in some sense, it’s understandable.  Coming to America because of persection was a big thing to do.  Many people died in the process. I can’t even imagine how bad things would have to be for me take my family get in a wooden boat and cross an ocean knowing my chances of survival were so small.  The Puritans were coming to America to create this perfect settlement.  They called it a “City on a Hill” which is a  term they are getting from the Bible.  In the Bible, Jesus is prophecied to come and build a New Jerusalem, Jerusalem is a city on a hill.  And in the New Jerusalem, Jesus would rule and the government would be perfect. Of course, there are countless dystopian movies, communes, heck there are even countries that have tried to do this.  The thinking was thst with the help of God and by following all these rules, the people would be perfect.  Well, and of course, all of this is so ironic from our vantage point in history, and what Nathaniel Hawthorn made much of in the Scarlet Letter, but these people thought they were creating this perfect society-  unfortunately, a perfect society isn’t easy to make.  

 

No, I’d say not- perfect societies seem to require perfect people- and that’s been an issue from the beginning.  And, as it often does, it came to factions and disputes about shared space.   Salem Town and Salem Village had to attend the same church, but the church was in Salem Town.  For some of the residents of Salem Village that meant they had to make a 10 mile trip (round trip)- every Sunday- which is annoying.  They had been trying to get their own church- apparently for almost two years- but had not been successful.  So, there’s that grudge, but the real mess started when a new minister showed up who was not easy to like and the church is split- now you have to remember- in the American settlements during this period- church attendance was mandatory- and there was a strong connection between church and state.  

 

So, in Salem, things were divided into two factions.  One of the factions was led by the Putnams; the other by the Porters.  The Putnams (who you’ll recognize that name from the play almost immediately) were the more conservative, they were losing their influence in the community, they were losing their financial place in the community.   Then you had the Israel Porter faction-  

 

Porter is NOT a name you’ll see in Miller’s play.  But you will see the Porter faction represented through the character of John Proctor.  

 

Yes, the group of farmers had ties to Salem Town and business connections, sometimes even personal connections. They are the up and coming group.  John Proctor, btw, in real life owned a tavern and his wife Elizabeth was an herbalist.  They were a prominent family.  Oh, and on that note, another curiosity that seems out of place- the puritans had no stigma against alcohol.  The history of Americans stigmatizing alcohol comes much later out of the burned over district in new york, and we may talk about that with another piece of literature- but the fun fact is everyone drank beer, whiskey, ale, any sort of alcohol, and even though girls weren’t allowed to speak unless spoken to with all kind of strict rules to follow, they could run around the local tavern and drink- which they did- in fact- the first time Elizabeth was ever accused in real life with being a witch was in a tavern.  But that is an aside that has nothing to do with the play-  just a little fun fact.  American social critic once said  “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

And that’s where we begin maligning the Puritans in US History. 

 

Fun fact indeed, well This next part really fascinates me because it involves the minister.  Of course, my father is a Christian minister so I find this man, the Reverend Samuel Parris, a particular hideous and particularly evil kind of human.  Samuel Parris is a loser by any outside definition.  He has been unsuccessful at business and at life in many ways.  He also is a particularly greedy man- he’s totally obsessed with money and made excessive financial demands of his congregation- which isn’t an endearing trait if you are a struggling farmer who does hard physical labor alone six days a week and this is your one day off.  There is a written  He had  demanded land, cash, cut up firewood, of farmer.  ”When money shall be plentiful, more money shall be paid to me.”  That’s a quote.  I also want to point out that he’s the only one in this story that has slaves.  In Miller’s Crucible, he has the slave Tituba which I know you’re going to talk about in a minute, but in real life he also had a male slave, John, who may have been Tituba’s husband, but either ways was also Parris’ slave.  Here’s what makes people cynical about his true religious sentiment-, everything that happened in Salem, revolved around this preacher, Samuel Parrish- he is not just the instigator, but he is also the perpetuator of the witch hunt.  Now back to politics, the Putnams supported this preacher.  The Porters were against him.  In October before the chaos breaks loose the Porter camp  gained control over the church and were done with Parris.  They proceeded to cut off his salary and his firewood.  They also questioned his claim to the village parsonage and land (when you read or watch the play, you’ll hear references to the firewood and the parsonage).

 

You must remember, these are congregationalists- which unlike Catholics or presbyterians are governed by majority, so they can do that sort of thing.  

 

From my perspective, and I know I’m dangerously bordering on the arrogance of the presence and getting too far ahead in the story, but from my perspective, I just find it very coincidental and very curious that everything that happened- started with this preacher that I find a sacrilege and where it really makes me angry- because he is only able to do what he can do because the people in his congregation are actually good, Godly, moral people and he’s using their goodness against them.  

 

Well, obviously you’re not alone. It all started in the winter of 1692, first of all it’s incredibly cold.  But one evening after dinner, at Parris house, his daughter, Betty- age 9 and his niece, Abigail age 11,  and maybe even some other girls, but for sure these two go upstairs with his Indian slave, Tituba.  And likely for fun, but we don’t know how things started, they begin doing things they called  “black magic”- telling fortunes , inviting spirits to come that sort of thing- which is totally forbidden in Puritan society- and in the Christian faith at all times since forever, btw.  But the account goes that all of a sudden they saw something. They saw a specter- a ghost.  Betty began to have convulsive fits.  She apparently struggled like she was being attacked.  Abigail also began to have these fits too.  The word they used was “afflicted” Parris got frightened and sent for the village doctor who told him there was nothing physically wrong with the girls and that this was witchcraft. .  

 

I want to interject here, because most modern Americans don’t understand this sort of thing.  But growing up in Brazil and living in Zimbabwe as a child, this sort of thing is not strange to me at all.  And I really don’t think it’s strange to many people around the world.  It’s estimated that 40% of the world today is animistic- that just means 40% of the world believes and occasionally engages with the spirit world- the invisible world, but one where people interact with spirits.  In Brazil we call this spiritism, and two people of the total population opening identify as such, but it’s practiced under many different names, in every culture on earth- including all Western countries.  And I want to point out that it has been practiced in the Americas long before European settlers showed up.  Tituba, although in Miller’s play she’s African American woman, was in real life a Native American woman- this means her religion was animistic- something still practiced all over the world. 

 

 And although no Puritan would have openly confessed to messing with spirits, we know that lots of people do- even  those devoutly religious ones. We know this happened because there is historical records of it.  There are documents referring a neighbor of Parris by the name of Mary Sibley who asked John Indian, Parris’ male slave, to make a witch’s cake using Betty and Abigail’s urine.  And although in the cases of these two girls, the witch cake didn’t reveal anything, it goes to show that this sort of thing existed. 

Well today, people who are not familiar with any version of animism or who have never met a witch doctor  just can’t understand any of the thinking around this sort of thing, and it feels strange.  And I have read a lot of articles trying to scientifically especially what made these girls convulse- which they most certainly did- were they possessed, did they eat ergot a fungus that  that is linked to LSD, were they just emotional and pretending because they were going to get in trouble for messing around with Tituba- all sorts of theories have floated around over the last 300 years- obviously no one knows what happened- in Miller’s Play, he goes with the theory that they were faking it- a very plausible theory to me, but I won’t take a side here.

Dr. Griggs diagnosed witchcraft- to the ministers daughter and niece.  That is not good for the minister who is already in a lot of trouble.  What we know for sure is that, however, it happened, Betty and Abigail began to name names of people who they claim they saw spirits of- specters as they called them.

 

The concept of specters was nothing something I was familiar with.  Can you explain for a second what that means.

 

Absolutely, and remember, don’t let the arrogance of the present cloud how you view this, because for us this might seem strange and unreasonable, but is absolutely NOT unreasonable.  Here’s how it worked, the people, a religious people, definitely believed in a spirit world, and they believed that all spirits were devils.  They believed that the devil would come and would make deals with people thus making the people powerful enough to send their specters or spirits to haunt godly people.  So, Someone could say, “Christy’s specter came to me in the middle of the night and tried to kill me.”  You could say, but I was at home, Garry was there he can prove it, and the accuser could say, I didn’t say your body was there- your specter was there.  As you can imagine, it’s difficult to defend an accusation like that-  there’s nothing to verify what you did except the word of the accuser.  They called this spectral evidence.

 

And this is where, as we look back at Parris and then Putnam, the story gets suspicious looking from the point of history.  Parris, the minister under attack, started to accuse people- and what we will see over time, historically they were ironically the same people that were opposing him in all of these religious disputes- in other words most of the accusers are of the Putnam faction and almost all of the accused were of the Porter faction.  

 

Well, then this poor Indian woman, Tituba, gets thrown into the mix.

 

Her role is critical and really caused the thing to take off- but remember, Tituba is the one player here that we shouldn’t judge too harshly.  Tituba and then her husband John have both been such an interesting part  in the story.  And Tituba has been quite misrepresented- even by Miller in his play.    But, Tituba, before you feel too sorry for her because she did take a beating- literally and metaphorically, this is one player who managed to survive the scandal and did eventually, it seems she gets her freedom out of all this.  She is the first accused, but also she’s the first real accuser- although history tells us she was likely  coerced by Parris to make the accusations she made and she did recant them later in life.

 

Tituba confessed to being involved in a Satanic conspiracy aimed at the minister.  She confessed that there were several witches from Boston whose specters met invisibly at the minister’s house and they had recruited witches in the town.  Tituba confessed that she spoke directly with the Devil, a man dressed in black, and that she signed something they called the Devil’s book.  She said there were nine witches.  When she was pressed, she  named two older women who were not very well-viewed in the town- Sarah Osmond and Sarah Goode. 

 

 Well I do think it’s important to tell right off that bat that Tituba would eventually claim that Parris physically beat her before her first examination and told her what to say.  Anyway, whether he did that or not, what we know for sure is that Tituba was interrogated five times, 

more than any other defendant at great length.  She was busted with the little girls and her life was in danger.  She had to give the magistrates something, but to me, her story seems fanciful, and I can’t imagine believing it- but obviously people did.  She told them how shoe rode upon a pole and flew through the air to the houses of two church familes and attached their children.  

 

Her testimony, whether it was coerced or not, set the stage for judicial conduct of future examinations.  Tituba talked of “signing the Devil’s Book” “”witches” “meetings” all the things you’ll see in the play that sound so strange to our modern ears.  By the end of March, Lawson, the former minister of Salem, who had come back to investigate had determined that the devil had come to wreck the church because of their internal dispute- and that this was the devil’s doing.  He claimed with authority  that there were 23-24 witches that had been spectrally seen in the village. 

 

 But Garry, I know other towns had had witches before- it still seems so strange that this blew up so much larger than it had anywhere else.

True, and really there are a couple of really important legal reasons for this- which sound a little boring to talk about, but actually made a big difference.  In the settlements- before this time, there had been rules.  In the past, if you wanted to accuse a person you had to present a monetary bond for prosecution of the complaint.  The purpose of this was precisely to keep people from running around charging people with all kinds of frivolous crimes.  If you wanted to accuse someone of anything, you had to put some money on the table.  For whatever reason, John Hawthorn (you’ll see his name in the play) as well as other powerful men in town-  suspended this practice- so all of a sudden, it was cheap and easy to accuse whoever you want.   And like you would expect, all of a sudden, the courts began to overflow with complaints, hearings , and arrests- apparently in this “city on a hill”, there had been a lot of bitterness brewing up for a really long time. Many longstanding grudges and feuds were just waiting for an opportunity, and now they had one.  But another legal precedent was changed, clearly a bad idea, that that affected how things turned in out.  In Salem, unlike in other places they didn’t separate the accusers- from each other.  So you could accuse people together- this allowed people to collaborate and intimidate the defendants.  And so they did….

 

And so they did…. What a way to say it.  Well, hopefully we have set the stage for the start of this, not too long, four act play.  Next week, we will open the text and see how Miller chooses to represent the story as it really happened, but also the allegory he sees again evolving in his present day American context….because for Miller….the Puritans are not the only ones capable of witch hunting…..

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