The crucible programme

octagon E I

Thurs 31 Jan - Sat 1 Mar 2008

An Octagon Theatre Production

tHE CIWCIBLE By Arthur Miller

www.octagonbolton.co.uk Sue Hodgkiss, DL •

Principal Patron Principal Sponsor

*oft are Prqduct - Go to 1.

DIRE ORS fl otEs

Mark Babych, Director of The Crucible

Early 1692, Salem, Massachusetts.

A group of young girls fall ill, suffering

hallucinations and seizures. In

theocratic Puritan New England, this

could only mean one thing; the devil

was on the loose. Unable to attribute

the sickness to natural causes, the

inexplicable symptoms spur fears of

witchcraft, and very soon the girls,

and many other residents of Salem,

begin to accuse other villagers of

consorting with the devil and casting

spells. Old grudges and jealousies fan

the flames of hysteria. The theocratic

government machine rolls into action

and within weeks, dozens of people

are in jail charged with witchcraft. By

August 1692, nineteen people (and

two dogs) had been convicted and

hanged for witchcraft.

Early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy leads special

congressional committees intended to root out

communist sympathisers in the United States. Like

the Salem trials in 1692, suspected communists were

encouraged to confess and identify other as a means

to escape punishment. False accusations perpetuate

a climate of hysteria as people attempt to save

themselves, but some, like Arthur Miller, refuse to

give in to the questioning. Those branded as

communists, and those people who refused to

incriminate their friends, are blacklisted.

Hysteria, paranoia and intolerance threaten and tear

communities apart, and one doesn't have to look

very far to see that The Crucible is an incredibly

potent play for today.

Over the past three seasons we have produced

almost all of the major works by Arthur Miller, a

man whose moral compass enables us to see the

world and ourselves with a startling naked reality.

For these are real people that populate his plays

and, as such, their lives burn deeper into you and

expose and touch parts of you that sometimes you

would prefer to lay dormant. One theme in

particular seems to permeate and weave its way

through nearly all his work, and that is how difficult

it is to lead a good and honest life. In John Proctor

this theme finds powerful expression in a man who

casts away his reputation, and ultimately his life

because he will not lie and sign himself to lies.

Once again it has been a real pleasure to share the

rehearsal room with this heavy weight of American

Theatre and like all great plays it still packs a punch

as powerfully as it did when first it entered the ring.

Mark Babych Octagon Artistic Director and

Director of The Crucible

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Arthur Miller in 1960. Miller drew inspiration from modern day McCarthyism to write The Crucible.

When Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in 1953, the

American people had been, for some time, in the grip

of an anti-communist crusade that denounced not only

communism but any kind of leftist thinking which

challenged the rigid social Darwinism of the American Dream. In the attempts to obtain confessions and the

names of others culpable, Miller saw a similarity with

the methods used in 17th century Salem. This inspired

him to write the play whose real subject - although

ostensibly an event of the distant past - cannot have

been lost on any of the audience at the time.

In the early 1950s, this latter-day witch-hunt was given

its ferocious drive, and thus its name, by Senator

Joseph McCarthy. However, although McCarthy is

popularly associated with the House Un-American

Activities Committee, which largely pursued this campaign, he was never in fact one of its members.

The HUAC was actually set up by Congress towards the

end of the 30s. America at that time was sharply divided:

right-wing ideology was spreading across Europe, and to be a communist in 30s America was, among other

things, to put on record your opposition to this

ideology. Franklin D Roosevelt's New Deal, instituted to pick up the pieces of a Depression-shattered

economy, began to look disappointingly tame to those on the left and alarmingly red to those on the right.

In response to the early HUAC investigations, the major

Hollywood studios rushed out propaganda films to

prove their loyalty. Life became precarious for writers

and performers, especially in the brave new world of

TV, where right-wing corporate sponsors called the shots. In his autobiography, Timebends, Arthur Miller

recalls how his friend Pert Kelton was summarily sacked

from her role in the popular sitcom The Honeymooners because she and her husband had participated in a

May Day parade many years earlier. Book-burning also

became popular, and John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath was one of the first literary casualties of the

American red scare.

When Joseph McCarthy was elected to Congress in

1946, he was not at all notable as an anti-communist.

His parocular hallmarks were ambition, unscrupulousness and a talent for manipulating the

press. It was not until 1950, while seeking an angle for

Like the alleged witches in The Crucible, witnesses

before HUAC were told that if they admitted their

"guilt" and informed on their "co-conspirators", mercy would be shown unto them. If, however, they refused

to cooperate, they could expect to go to prison. A few chose prison or voluntary exile, but they were a minority.

Some publicly confessed to having been "dupes" of the

communists and yet others embraced the full

recantation charade, naming the names of former

radical associates whose identity the committee already knew. There were also, of course, plenty in Hollywood

who positively rejoiced in the anti-subversive crusade.

The film Big Jim McLain, in which co-producer and star

John Wayne played a HUAC investigator, was dedicated

to the men of the Committee.

Meanwhile, McCarthy's nemesis was at hand. It came

about partly through his Chief Counsel, Roy M Cohn,

whose close friend David Schine also worked for

McCarthy. When Schine was drafted into the Army,

Cohn pulled out all the stops to try to prevent it.

McCarthy, who was already investigating alleged communist influence in the Army, joined Cohn in taking

on that institution in a series of televised hearings run

by the Investigations Subcommittee, with Senator Karl Mundt sitting in for McCarthy as Chairman. The Army

accused McCarthy and Cohn of using intimidation to

seek special treatment for Schine, while McCarthy

counter-charged that the Army had held Schine as a

"hostage" to prevent the investigation of communists

in the armed forces.

During the 36 days of the hearings, people were able

for the first time to see their hero in full thrust, telling blatant lies, presenting falsified evidence, and bullying

witnesses and committee members alike. Fortunately,

the Army's counsel, Joseph Welch, was one person who

was not afraid of him, and fearlessly exposed his lies

and fabricated evidence. He denounced McCarthy for

his ruthlessness, telling him that, "Until this moment,

.4101' Senator McCarthy with aides Roy Cohn and David Schine

414

senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or

our recklessness." As McCarthy tried in vain to defend

himself, Welch added the now legendary line, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you

left no sense of decency?"

The case ended with a mild knuckle-rapping to both

sides, but it spelled the end of McCarthy's career.

When the Democrats regained control of Congress, he

was officially censured and relieved of his posts.

Although he continued to sit as a junior senator, few

now bothered to stay and listen when he made one of

his increasingly rare speeches in Congress.

McCarthy died only two and a half years later, but

McCarthyism lived on. People in all walks of life

continued to be dismissed from jobs and to find

themselves on unofficial blacklists, not because some committee in Washington decreed it, but because ordinary

people were willing to throw one another to the lions

to protect themselves. Americans were no longer just

afraid of communists: they were afraid of each other.

Gradually, towards the end of the decade, things

began to ease up. Arthur Miller was one of the last

prominent victims of HUAC. He refused to co-operate

with their enquiries, and the apologetic judge at his

trial in 1957 imposed a fine and a suspended 30-day

prison sentence. The conviction was subsequently

overturned in the court of appeal.

As the 50s gave way to the 60s, the Cold War came to

be fought more externally than internally.

McCarthyism, however, never fully went away. It goes

without saying that, even now, a communist could not

get elected to office in the USA.

Dennis Feftham Research by Robert Cohen

Lo John Good

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punished, as dancing, games, gambling, drunkenness and even idle conversation were regarded as means by which the devil could enter a soul. For girls and women particularly, life was passive and dutiful, as only men could vote and take an active part in affairs. Bearing all this in mind, Frances Hill, in her book about the witch trials, A Delusion Of Satan, contends that the Salem girls were suffering from the same condition of clinical hysteria as Freud's patients -repressed members of 19th-century society - whom he and Breuer described, two hundred years later, in Studies On Hysteria.

In Salem Village, where the outbreak took place, the tensions felt by most colonists were exacerbated by a history of local antagonisms. The arguments were mainly connected with land rights and with efforts to gain independence from Salem Town, several miles to the east. In 1672, the villagers had built their own meeting house, but there were those who did not wish to sever links with the town, preferring Salem's more cosmopolitan outlook.

The pro-separation faction was led by the Putnam family, prosperous landowners who displayed a tendency for bullying tactics, especially when frustrated in their attempts to run village affairs. An ongoing subject of dissent was the appointment of a local minister; Samuel Parris - a Putnam nominee - was the fourth, his predecessors having fled the curitentious community rather sooner than expected. But Parris was

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insecure and paranoid. As Proctor says in the play, he was

all too apt to "preach only hellfire and bloody damnation", provoking

some of his flock to withhold payment of the ministry tax.

It was in Parris' household that the hysteria began. Betty Parris, the nine- year-old daughter of Samuel and his sickly wife Elizabeth, and Abigail, their

eleven-year-old niece, who lived with them, started to behave oddly in January

1692. They were soon joined by Elizabeth Hubbard, the Putnams' young daughter Ann -

Ruth in the play, but in fact named after her mother - Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis. As Betty confessed a few weeks afterwards, she and Abigail (possibly with others) had been passing the long, dark winter days in the illicit pastime of fortune telling, and scared themselves. There is no reason to think that Tituba, the family's West Indian slave, was behind this. The colonists had carried with them, from Europe, a belief in witchcraft and interest in the occult, so the ideas of which the children made use, although prohibited, were all around them.

Tituba, however, was the first person accused by the girls of bewitching them. Parris found his slave a convenient scapegoat and was eager to elicit her confession, but Tituba, aespite i.s beatings, did not confess to guilt straight away. While she held out, the

witchcraft, no actual trials were able to take place until

June. The colonists' charter had been revoked in 1684,

and it was not until May 1692 that a new one arrived

by ship, along with a new governor, Sir William Phipps.

Finding himself faced with a desperate situation, Phipps

quickly set up a special court to deal with the crisis.

In the trials that followed, the girls' former testimony was accepted as hard evidence, which the defendants,

with no lawyers, were unable to contest. When Bridget

Bishop became the first to be hanged, on 10 June, one

of the judges resigned and the ministers of Boston

wrote to Phipps, urging caution, but neither Phipps nor

the remaining judges appear to have taken any notice.

The hangings gathered pace.

Five people were executed in July, five in August and

nine in September, eight of those in one day. Perhaps

the sight of so many hanging from one tree brought

about a belated sense of disgust, but there was gathering

uproar and 22 September witnessed the last of the hangings. On 12 October, Phipps wrote that he had

forbidden any more people to be imprisoned for witchcraft,

and on the 29th he dissolved the court. His doubts

about the whole process roust have crystallised mat

month, when the girls named his own wife as a witch!

It was not until May the following year that the

governor ordered all accused witches still in jail to be

discharged, and even then a number remained, unable

to pay their prison fees. Many of the authority figures

involved, including Hathorne, showed no remorse. Samuel Parris, fighting unsuccessfully to retain his job,

admitted only that he might have been slightly at fault.

Ann Putnam, at the age of 26 and after the death of

her parents, made an apparently full public apology,

declaring that she had not acted out of "any anger,

malice; or ill will to any person”, but had been

"deluded by Satan". All that is known of the other

girls is that Betty Parris, Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis

married and moved away from the area, but there is

no information about Mary Warren or Abigail Williams.

There is sad testimony that one of the girls involved

was genuinely out of her wits. John Hale - a keen

witch-hunter until his wife, too, was accused - wrote that one of the first "afflicted persons" was "followed

with diabolical molestation to her death". That person may

have been Abigail, but, as with so much else in this

story, the truth must remain in the realm of speculation.

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Opposite page, middle: Mary Warren turning on John Proctor in the original production of The Crucible, 1953

Left: Bridget Bishop's death warrant, 10th June 1692

Opposite page, far left: Arresting a witch: the accusations of the girls led to a deluge of imprisonments for women in Salem

it

IWCIBLE which my reading of American history could not reconcile with the free-wheeling iconoclasm of the country's past. I saw forming a kind of interior mechanism of confession and forgiveness of sins which until now had not been rightly categorized as sins.

New sins were being created monthly. It was very odd how quickly these were accepted into the new

orthodoxy, quite as though they had been there since the beginning of time. Above all, above all horrors, I saw

accepted the notion that conscience was no longer a private matter but one of state administration. I saw men handing conscience to other men and thanking other men for the opportunity of doing so.

I had known of the Salem witch-hunt for many years before "McCarthyism" had arrived, and it had always remained an inexplicable darkness to me. When I looked into it now, however, it was with the contemporary situation at my back, particularly the mystery of the handing over of conscience which seemed to me the central and informing fact of the time. One finds, I suppose, what one seeks. I doubt I should ever have tempted agony by actually writing a play on the subject had I not come upon a single fact. it was that Abigail Williams, the prime mover of the Salem hysteria, so far as the hysterical children were concerned, had a short time earlier been the house servant of the Proctors and now was crying out Elizabeth Proctor as a witch; but more - it was clear from the record that with entirely uncharacteristic fastidiousness she was refusing to include John Proctor, Elizabeth's husband, in her accusation despite the urgings of the prosecutors. Why? I searched the records of the trials in the courthouse at Salem but in no other instance could I find such a careful avoidance of the implicating stutter, the murderous, ambivalent answer to the sharp questions of the prosecutors. Only here, in Proctor's case, was there so clear an attempt to differentiate between a wife's culpability and a husband's.

The testimony of Proctor himself is one of the least elaborate in the records, and Elizabeth is not one of the major cases either. There could have been numerous reasons for his having been ultimately apprehended and hanged which are nowhere to be found. After the play opened, several of his descendants wrote to me; and one of them believes that Proctor fell under suspicion because, according to family tradition, he had for years been an amateur inventor whose machines appeared to some people as devilish in their ingenuity, and again according to tradition he had had to conceal them and work on them privately long before the witch-hunt had started, for fear of censure if not worse. The explanation does not account for everything, but it does fall in with his evidently liberated cast of mind as revealed in the record; he was one of the few who not only refused to admit consorting with evil spirits, but who persisted in calling the entire business a ruse and a fake. Most, if not all, of the other victims were of their time in conceding the existence of the immemorial plot by the Devil to take over the visible world, their only reservation being that they happened not to have taken part in it themselves.

It was the fact that Abigail, their former servant, was their accuser, and her apparent desire to convict Elizabeth and save John, that made the play conceivable for me.

As in any such mass phenomenon, the number of characters of vital, if not decisive, importance is so great as to make the dramatic problem excessively difficult. For a