The Play Podcast - 054 - The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Welcome to the Play Podcast with me Douglas Shots. Hello and welcome to episode 54 of the Play Podcast, where we explore the greatest new and classic plays, I'm Douglas Shots, founder and host of the Play Podcast. Before the curtain rises on our episode today, a brief plug if I may. I'd like to invite you to become a patron of the podcast. Since I launched the Play Podcast in April 2020, I have managed to issue any form of advertising or sponsorship, and I would like to continue to produce the podcast without doing so. I am asking for your support to help me to continue to make the podcast, and perhaps in some way as a recognition of the value of the catalog we produce so far. I want to make it clear that I will continue to make new episodes and the entire back catalog available to anyone to listen to for free via their preferred podcast player or our website. In gratitude for your support, patrons will also have exclusive access to additional benefits. 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The curtain rises on a candlelit bedroom in a home in Salem, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1692. The Reverend Samuel Paris kneels, praying beside the bed of his 10-year-old daughter. She is praying for her recovery from a mysterious affliction that has overcome her. An affliction that the local doctor suggests has no natural cause. An affliction from which she has not woken since she was discovered in the woods the previous night dancing with her cousin Abigail. Not only is there dancing a sacrilege in this Puritan community, they were also observed enacting some form of pagan ritual, led by their black servant, Tituba, a ritual that rumor now construes as the work of witchcraft. Has Betty Paris succumbed to a spell cast by spirits in the service of the devil? It is not long before this tight-knit Christian community is gripped by hysteria at the threat of witchcraft from within, a threat that many genuinely fear, and that some will exploit to their own advantage. This is Arthur Miller's powerful cautionary play The Crucible, which recreates the real life terror of the notorious Salem witch trials. Miller wrote the play in 1952-3 at a time when America was going through a modern witch hunt, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the investigations of the House on American Activities Committee, who sought to prosecute anyone with sympathies or connections to communism. The first production of the play, on Broadway in 1953, was not an unqualified success. Miller speculating later that perhaps the country wasn't yet ready to face the truth about this period of shocking political coercion. However, in the years since, The Crucible has gone on to become Miller's most frequently produced play, both in the US and internationally. There is clearly something universal in its exploration of individual betrayal and institutional tyranny. Miller said about the play that he could always tell what the political situation in a country is when the play is suddenly a hit there. It is either a warning of tyranny on the way or a reminder of tyranny just passed. As it happens, the play is currently being revived at the National Theatre in London in a new production directed by Lindsay Turner, and I wonder if we may decide which warning now applies in the United Kingdom. To help us explore the origins meaning and enduring relevance of The Crucible, I'm joined today from New York by an indisputable expert on Arthur Miller, Dr. Stephen Marino. Dr. Marino is the founding editor of the Arthur Miller Journal, which features essays on all aspects of Miller's life, work, and career. He's also the former president of the Arthur Miller Society, and he is the author and editor of several books and countless articles on Miller. Loyal listeners may also recall that Steve did me the honor of appearing on the podcast on our episode about Miller's death of a salesman, almost exactly two years ago, which unpleased to say has been our most popular to date. Thanks in no small part to his expert contribution. Hello Steve, great to see you again, thanks for coming back to the podcast. I Douglas, thank you for inviting me, I'm very happy to be here again. I wanted to start Steve with asking you if you remember when you first encountered The Crucible, or even the work of Arthur Miller because it must have been some impression on you that became such a professional enthusiast. Well, actually, I'm fortunate enough to have gone to high school right here in New York, actually in Brooklyn, and The Crucible, when I was in high school, was part of the English curriculum along with the Arthur of a salesman. So I first read The Crucible in high school, then of course I was an English major in college, and I read The Crucible again, and then when I started my teaching career in high school, we taught The Crucible because it fit in very well with American history. You would always do The Crucible as part of a study of American colonialism. And then when I started teaching in college, I of course did The Crucible again. And so I have a great familiarity with the play, and then coincidentally, when I started my doctoral studies, I was taking an American drama course, and I did a paper on the language of The Crucible, and I subsequently got that essay, turned into an article, it was my first published article. So I owe my sort of academic career, I guess, to Arthur Miller and The Crucible, and I ended up doing my doctoral dissertation on poetic language of Arthur Miller's plays, and that launched my sort of Arthur Miller career, I guess. Well, it's fabulous. I didn't realize how specifically this was important to you. I mean, it's just reaffirmed that you are the perfect guest, Steve. I wonder if you could give our listeners an idea of where the writing of This Play, The Crucible fits into Arthur Miller's life and career. Well, this is a very important play in Miller's career. First of all, Miller had, it's amazing to think about a 70-year career if you count from his first plays in the University of Michigan till he passed. But This Play belongs to The Period, which we'll call Miller's Great Period, I guess. The Period, which defines his career. The period from 1947 to 1956, in which he produced those four truly great plays, and that would be, of course, all my sons, death of a salesman, The Crucible, and both versions of a view from the bridge. So that's where it fits in the entire career, and he was arguably at the height of his career during those times. And as you mentioned in introductory remarks, The Crucible, along with Death of a Salesman, is his most produced play, probably because of the very large cast of 21. It's very popular in high schools, colleges, community theaters, and then, of course, all the tremendous professional productions all over the world. Well, we'll come to talk about why this is the case, this enduring popularity. So let's actually, for listeners who haven't seen or read the play recently, could you also give us a brief summary of the main characters and plot of the play. Please don't worry about spoilers, as we will have to give the game away in order to do justice to play in our conversation. And I know this is a challenge, because we talked just before we came on her about how can we be brief about this, but let's just lay some of the groundwork. So listeners who don't know it that well can follow along with us. Okay, so as you said, the play is Miller's account of the cell in which trials, which happened in 1692 in Massachusetts. The play itself is constructed in four acts. The first act details the start of the hysteria, which is in the Reverend Paris' home in Salem Village. His daughter, Betty, has been caught dancing in the woods with a number of other girls, along with a Paris' slave, Ticchiva. The girls have been shocked, Betty Paris and a number of girls are in some kinds of coma or a catatonia, and the rumour is of witchcraft. So Paris, who's very fearful of witchcraft having been found in the minister's home, has called for the Reverend Hale of Beverly to come and examine the girls to see if there is witchcraft. Meanwhile, the rumour of witchcraft has been spreading throughout the town and various characters, important characters in the play, including the potnums, John Procter, Giles Corey, Rebecca Nurse, come to the house. The acts concludes with Reverend Hale first examining Ticchiva. She admits to conjuring, and then the girls and Ticchiva start crying out other people in this madness to escape the blame on themselves of being bewitched. We also discover in the act that John Procter, a very respected farmer in the town, had had a relationship with a former servant in his house, a 17-year-old Abigail Williams. And Abigail is Reverend Paris' niece. And she is living with Reverend Paris after having been cast out from the Procter home when Procter's wife discovered what was going on between them. Abigail still is very attracted to Procter, as he is to her, there's no doubt about that. Act 2 focuses on the Procter farmhouse, and we see the estranged and cold relationship between Procter and his wife, Elizabeth, who has difficulty forgiving him for what he has done. The servant Mary Warren has been going to the witchcraft trials or examinations, and then she returns with the news that things are sort of out of control now. More and more people have been accused, and then Reverend Hale arrives on the scene because Elizabeth Procter has been named in court, and Elizabeth suspects right away that it is Abigail who has named her as a way to sort of bring her down to eliminate Elizabeth. Hale wants to examine the Christian character of the home, because John Procter is not exactly a churchgoer, and in the middle of his examination of them, the marshals show up to take Elizabeth away, and she is arrested, and the act ends with Procter getting a servant Mary Warren to say, "We're going to go and tell them the truth that this is not witchcraft." Yeah, and one of the reasons he knows this is, in Act 1, there's a conversation you said between Procter and Abigail, which reveals that they had this previous affair, and that Abigail still loves him or wants to be with him, and so, of course, Elizabeth suspects her motives in that sense, but also that Abigail admitted to him when he suggested what were you doing, dancing witchcraft. Abigail says, "No, no, no, it was just dancing, it's not witchcraft." It was just sport. Yeah, so he knows that she's already pretending. Yes, yes, and she, by the way, she's, as you see this clearly in Act 3, she's the leader of the girls in crying out, and they take the lead of accusing people and the effects of being there, bewitching them from her. She's a quite a manipulator. So Act 3 takes place in the anti-room of the Salem meeting house, which has been turned into a court, and Act 3 is very much filled with a lot of inquisition and questioning of various characters. The highlight of that scene is when Procter brings in Mary Warren to confess, that Procter's Letcherie is discovered, and they bring in Elizabeth Proctor. He says she has never lied in her life, and in a very dramatic scene, Elizabeth lies for what is probably the first time in her life. And then John confesses to the Letcherie, calls Abigail a whore and he's arrested and taken away. So sorry, can I stop you there, Steve. You're talking about Elizabeth lying. She lies to protect her husband, because her husband is told to court already that she's had the affair, and they want to verify whether this is true or not. And if he had, that will obviously besmirch Abigail and her testimony and her integrity. So they call him Elizabeth, and John expects her to affirm this for them because she cannot lie. But of course, for once in her life, she decides she'll protect him and says no, there was no affair. And that scene is a tremendous turning point for the important character of Reverend Hale, who has come to discover the truth of the witchcraft things. And that's the scene where he says no, that's a natural lie for her to tell. This man has been telling the truth. It's Abigail, who's not been telling the truth. And he quits the proceedings at the end of that scene, a very dramatic scene. Of course, the people are put in the position where, if they confess, then they will not hang. So they lie to say, okay, yes, I've been in consort with the devil in order to save their lives. And the interesting thing is, when you confess, they also very much stress or urge or encourage or press you to name other people that you have seen with the devil. And this idea of naming names is crucial to the analogy or parallel that Miller was making with the communist witch hunts, because in the House on American Activities Committee, they wanted you to name names of people who have been to alleged communist meetings. So the parallels are just wonderful. You mentioned Mary Warren, who's the proctor's servant. She knows that it's a fraud because she has been part of it. And she comes to the court as you say under proctor's counsel to try and call them out. But when she does, Abigail and the others turn their focus on her. Under pressure, she relents, but there's a fantastic scene, isn't there where the girls start to sort of scream out and shake. And it's like they're under some crazy spell. And we are shocked by that, too. We are actually in a position where we're witnessing this crazy behavior that they originally would have done and can feel the bewildering impact that these outbursts would have had. And it brings everything to a halt. And it's actually quite scare. And they're quite convincing, aren't they, when they behave like that? Yes, they claim there's a yellow bird up in the rafters. And Mary Warren's spirit is in the yellow bird. Now, of course, the girls claim to see the yellow bird. No one in the courtroom can see the yellow bird. And then Mary Warren in her own fear and panic goes and rejoins the girl. And Abigail hugs her in a tremendous, but I'll call sisterly embrace. But there's a very important point because this is the kind of evidence that they used to try and hang people, what was known as quote, unquote, spectral evidence. It wasn't real evidence. There were no real witches. There was no, but if the bewitched person said they saw it, then they saw it. And of course, down the road a year after the Salem witch trials, when they no longer admitted spectral evidence into the court, the whole system just collapsed. So let's finish off where it ends in the last act. So act four is months later. It's the fall. There's revulsion now against the trials. Salem is in chaos. There's hints of revolution. And it's the morning when they're going to hang with a sainted Rebecca nurse and John Proctor. Rehail has returned to Salem to try to get some of the cues to confess because he's trying to tell them what's the point of confessing when everything is a sham. Reverend Paris is in fear of his life. And he's worried about the hanging of John Proctor and Rebecca nurse. He says because they are a different type of person. The person we have hanged up and to now are the sort of disenfranchised of Salem, you know, people who sleep in ditches and drunks and outcasts. But Rebecca and John are very well known and respected people in the town. And those are the kinds of people we cannot hang. And he tries to get Danforth to postpone them. And Danforth will not do it. So Proctor has not given up in all this time. And they call upon Elizabeth Proctor to speak to Proctor. Elizabeth's been accused. But they've sort of postponed anything with her because as we found out in act three, she's pregnant and they will not hang pregnant women. So they want to bring Elizabeth in and John in to speak to her to get him to confess. So once again, as I said, if they confess, they don't have to hang them. So they're trying to get John's wife, Elizabeth, to convince him to confess to save his own life. So in a very dramatic scene, they haven't seen each other in all these months. They bring him in and they have this very tender scene between them, which is a nice parallel to the very cold scene that we saw them in act two. And he tells her that he's been thinking of confessing. He said, because why should I not confess? Because John has been tortured. And this is the key to understanding his character with the fact that he is not a good person. He's lived with evil, with sin. He's been a fraud. So why shouldn't I just give them this because it means nothing? Anyway, I'm not a good person. He also has this interesting argument that he's honest to say that I want to live. Yes. And God will see that I am being honest. I am being true to my character. Right. And she won't tell him what to do, but she says, but whatever you do, it is a good man that does it. The idea of Elizabeth giving him back his goodness, which she proclaims at the end of the play too. He has his goodness. Now is very, very important. So he decides he's going to confess. They write it down. And in a very dramatic scene, they want him to sign the confession. But at that very moment, they bring Rebecca nursing too. That's a very important moment for him because Rebecca in her goodness is seeing that he's going to do this. And they want him to sign his name to the document because the document must be posted on the church because the important thing about the Puritans is that private sin that's been in darkness must be brought out into the light for the good and conduct of the people. So he signs the document. But then he won't give it over to them. He says, God sees my name. He knows who I am. He knows what I am. Why doesn't have to be posted? Why won't you do it? He said, because it's my name. How may I live in the world without my name? My sons have my name. That is what gives me. Who I am, of course, Miller has name all over these four plays that I talked about. Jokella obsessed with his name. Willie Lohman with his name and Eddie in a view from the bridge with his name. So he tears up the document and he will not give them his name and he goes off to his hanging with his goodness, as we say. He also won't let them use his confession to underpin their agenda against others who will then also suffer. So we touched on the Salem witch trials and the House on American Activities Committee. And I want to just chuck a little bit about those as his inspiration, Steve. He talked about that he was inspired by what was in the air as he put it at the time, by which he meant the rise of McCarthyism and the House on American Activities Committee. This was the start of way back in the 30s, but it really gathered momentum in the late 40s when they started these hearings where they alleged communist activities in Hollywood. And then in the early 50s, they were focusing on other individuals in the entertainment industry. And this became really personal for Miller, didn't it? Tell us a bit about why that was the case with his personal involvement with this. Yeah. Well, there are actually two congressional committees. There was the Army McCarthy hearings from Senator Joseph McCarthy, conducted by him, and then the House on American Activities Committee, what we call UAC. And they were both revived after World War II, as you said, in response to what we call the red scare from the Soviet Union, and of course, the fall of China to the communist government. And people were called before the committees to admit to their radical past. And the targets of the committees were very often high-profile celebrities. And their appearances before the committees would guarantee publicity for the committees. And Miller saw friends and colleagues called before the committees. Now Miller became interested in seeing an analogy with these so-called witch-hands. As he said, I saw a living connection between myself and Salem and between Washington and Salem. And it was looking for a topic for a play to illustrate that. And a book by Marion Starkey called The Devil and Massachusetts came into his hands, and he read it, and he knew about the Salem witch trials from college. But when he read that book, he decided he was going to make a trip up to Salem to examine the actual transcripts, which were available to him. And on his way, he decided to go visit his very, very good friend, a friend who he called his brother, the director Ilya Kazan. Ilya Kazan, as we know, was famous as a movie director and a play director, especially of the plays of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Ilya Kazan directed Glassman, Assyrie Streetcar, all my sons, and death of a salesman. And he and Miller were very, very good friends. And Ilya Kazan had been subpoenaed to go before the committee and be pressured to name names. And Miller went to go see Kazan, to urge him not to name names. And interestingly enough, if you're listening to this, you can go into Miller's autobiography Time Bens and see his account and go into Ilya Kazan's autobiography and read his account. And you sort of see two very different versions of the same meeting. And he urged Kazan not to do it. And they parted ways. And then Miller went up to research. And when he left Salem on his way back, he turned on the radio and heard that Kazan had indeed named names. And their relationship was completely broken for over 10 years. And of course, the irony is that Kazan later directed Miller's play after the fall in 1964. And another interesting footnote, when there was the controversy over Kazan getting an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement, Miller went to bat for him and said Kazan should get as a war. And another interesting footnote is that Miller writes the play in 1952-1953. It was in 1956 that Miller himself became a target of the committee. Miller knew that his relationship with Marilyn Monroe was going to ring some renown to the committee. Yeah. Of course, there's a direct parallel, as you say, between Kazan's position and testimony, where he was under threat of not being able to continue to work. He would have been blacklisted in Hollywood and in theater. So like the others who of course were threatened with hanging, there was no way out if you stood your ground. But also Miller realized that the principal betraying others was morally indefensible. And he also realized that Kazan could have named him. There was no reason why, at some point, he wouldn't. You know, where does that kind of betrayal end? So you're right. The analogies between Salem and the Un-American activities committee are really striking. It's based on a fear of some fundamental threat to the established order. Either the devils winning the battle for human soul or the communists are undermining the fabric of the American dream. And it's a threat that is perceived to be so critical that there's no room for qualification, equivocation. And also I read in the introduction to his collective plays that he was fascinated not only by the terror, but a new subjective reality, a veritable mystique, which was gradually assuming a holy resonance, which also sounds like the tenor of the time in Salem, doesn't it, where it's a hysteria, a mystique that takes over. And he also, as you said, saw similarities between the way people are forced to confess. It's a ritualistic form almost like confession in a church, a private confession, but becomes very public, as you said, the Puritans wanted public confession. So I wanted to ask you about that setting again in the historical setting of the play. What was Salem like? What was the society like? That is the soil, so to speak, from which these events grew. It's a blessing that you use that quote from Miller about a veritable mystique taking on a holy residence. And I think that was the unique thing about Salem that we tend to forget, that Salem was a theocracy, where civil law was based on religious law. And that's key to, I think, understanding not only the political structure and the church structure, but the way the people of Salem felt about themselves, where God dominated their lives. Everything was centered around God, and the people in Salem village were particularly strict sects, and they led a particularly austere life, where everything was seen in black and white. There was the God, and there was the devil. There was good, and there was evil. Everything was starkly opposites. And Miller in the play used the language of opposites, and their lives was very stark. They were, they were farmers trying to eke out a living of the hard, rough, rocky soil. They lived on the edge of the wilderness. They lived on the edge of darkness, because in the darkness of the forest, where the Native Americans lived, who were associated with heathens and chaos, who weren't under the rule of their Christian God. Yeah, and it was dangerous, wasn't it? I mean, the marauding Indian tribe. So the woods is certainly a source of potential danger. Yeah, Abigail Williams, when she was a child, was sleeping in the house when the heathens came in and killed her mother and father, she says, they smashed my parents' heads on the pillow. Yeah, and isn't it true to say that the Puritans, I guess, believed that even in practical terms that their survival depended on being a unified community. Yes. And their beliefs were the roots of the foundation of this unity. But interestingly, the opposite is that the very strength of their belief and their moral code is what actually becomes a source of the excessive repression that they then bring to bear on others who are different. Because any descent threatens the whole community and must be met with extreme force. Absolutely. We talk about them being unified by their religious beliefs. But there was so many cracks in that fortress of theology. And we see Millie uses that in the play, but it was probably much greater in history. There were terrible divisions in the Salem Village community. We see it, of course, with the division with them having three different ministers in the last seven years. The ministers had to be elected. A lot of them didn't support Paris. There were terrible land squabbles in the community, arguing over boundaries. Land squabbles were arguably the cause of a lot of the divisions in the community. And we see that little bit in the play where Giles Corey says, Thomas Pottenham is reaching out for land because there's all these laws about if you were condemned or confessed to being a witch, you have to forfeit your land. And that's the whole thing behind Giles Corey, not admitting eye or nay to his indictment because he wanted his property to go to his son. So yes, that was also part of it. As hell says, personal vengeance is at the bottom of all this in the guise of religion. You could use religion as protection. It's interesting that we've taken about the conditions in which these events occurred. And it's not all ideological. There are, as you've described, pragmatic opportunistic kinds of behavior going on. But also you mentioned the opposites, the prevailing belief about God and the devil. There was no question in people's minds at that time that witches and witchcraft existed, for example. The Bible stated as much. So the world was very much seen as a battleground between God and the devil, wasn't it? And I was struck in the play and then actually in the production in London here when Reverend Hale first arrives. He carries a stack of books, which he refers to as the authority. These books are weighted with authority. In here is all the invisible world explained. And you can imagine the less literate population exceeding to this kind of authority, to these texts, to the moral guardians supposedly. It's like being binded by science in our age, though, by a different kind of science. And of course they turn to these leaders. The ministers are seen as being divinely guided. Their authority sits higher than the human realm somehow. So it's in this environment that there really is a real battle between God and the devil that people understand. Yes. I like the way you chose to talk about the books being weighted with authority. And Hale uses weighted with authority as a positive thing. But then we see the opposite of weight. You know, the word weight is repeated in that play about 10 or 11 times. And Miller uses it in very different ways. And of course you have the weight of religious authority, the weight of political authority, the weight of the government turns out not to be good in the play. And we see how Giles Cory dies when they're pressing him with stones. Giles Cory was not hanged. He was crushed with stones. And he dies, saying more weight, which is an actual historical fact. And Miller used it in the play to show how they literally crush, not only the individual, how they crushed their own society. Because you know, the sale in which trials in many ways people see as the end of that era in American history, the beginning of the end of that era as we went into the 18th century. That's a terrible image, isn't it, of Giles Cory being crushed to death. And as you say, Miller used the word theocracy in the commentary he published with the play as well. And he talks about in a theocracy, the main role of government becomes that of the scourge of God. And the devil becomes a weapon to whip men into surrender to a particular church or church state or theocracy. And of course, anytime we see the combination of church and state in the form of religious fundamentalism, for example, underpinning a state, we see this kind of oppression. So this is not unfamiliar in those terms either. I wanted to ask you about also in terms of some of the beliefs of the time, there was a further belief that the devil was most likely to come in female form, wasn't there? Yes. And the majority of the people accusing convicted of witchcraft were women. Yes, if you just examine the play for what it implies or states about the position of women, of course, the women associated with the devil, there's a tremendous undercurrent of sex and women in the play and the repression of sex. And the violence towards women in the play, the men always threatening to whip the women. How many times proctor says, "I'll whip you Mary Warren," Abigail threatens to be whipped, particularly all the disenfranchised women. The London production starts with a scene that's not in the play at such, but a preface of a church service led by Reverend Paris. And Abigail, as it's referenced in the play somewhere, that Abigail and Titchie by mess around a little bit in church are known to have done that. But anyway, he comes down into the congregation and literally slaps her to the floor. Oh, see, there you go. Yeah. It prefigures or just suggests the kind of violence that's endemic in this society. Yes, there's violence and there's also, as I mentioned earlier, this sexual repression, particularly in the women. I mean, the young girls are particularly repressed and we see that in the way they describe what went on in the forest, taking off their dresses, the women naked. Abigail describes herself in her whole way. I discover I don't have a stitch of clothing on. That's clearly a part of what's going on in the play. Also, the way we look at the play nowadays, you know, John Proctor was Abigail Williams boss. And here you have a man in charge of a woman who takes sexual advantage of her. That's the way we see that now. And for him, it was clearly just a sexual relationship. He says, I gave you the promise, a stallion gives a mare. That's exactly it. But to his fault, Abigail clearly says, he has awakened a knowledge in her, a sexual knowledge and emotional awareness. And now she's 17 years old and she can't control it and she channels it in revenge. That's her only way out. We'll come and talk about her in particular in a bit, but I was going to go back to the interestingly that Miller said sex in and the devil were easily linked. Yes. The Puritans believed that women were inherently sinful and more susceptible to damnation than men were. They believe that men and women were equal in the eyes of God, but not in the eyes of the devil because women's souls were seen as unprotected in their weak and vulnerable bodies. So this is where the fear comes from that females will be overtaken by the devil. And one of the forms of that expression is sexuality. And particularly illicit sexuality. And as you said at the very beginning of the play, we have the girl's rumored to be dancing naked in the woods. And then we have these frenzied fits in the courtroom. When they are overtaken by the devil, they could be interpreters being in the throws of sexual passion. Even there's some relationship with the devil there suggested, I think. Yes. And Miller, I was fascinated to read, Steve, that Miller saw when he went up to Salem as you mentioned to do his researches. Hanging the wall of the Salem Historical Society was a print and etching of the cubby of girls screaming and clawing at their invisible tormentors. Yes. Fantastic image, which he brings to life, of course. I want to go back to, you mentioned earlier, the disenfranchised. There's lots of evidence in the original trials that more material concerns fueled some of the prosecutions, feuds that have been going on. So there was a way to settle old scores or augment their property, as you say, their property disputes. And those are referenced in the play as well. But beyond those very specifics, I think there's a wider theme here, possibly, isn't it? About class or about pent up social disquiet or rebellion are the part of people who felt disadvantaged. Apparently, a number of the accusers originally were servants calling out their masters. So we see something about an uneasy society where there's a rigid hierarchical society where the lower rungs maybe see an opportunity to change things where their position and prospects have not been so good. And maybe they can strike back at a power balance that's not favoring them. Yes. And it does come down to the issue of power. The disenfranchised in its sale and community. And many communities, I mean, this is where the play is relevant to us today, have no power or see very little access to power. So if you have the opportunity to exercise some power over those people, you see superior to you, you are absolutely going to use it. In this case, it came through religion, which gave them the power to challenge, I think, isn't it? Yes. Challenge those who are above them. And there was, as I said earlier, there was clearly a hierarchy in Salon Village, an economic hierarchy, a religious hierarchy, a legal hierarchy, and at the bottom were people like Abigail and Mary, who are Antituba, they are basically servants, and it'll treat it at times. You talked about Proctor whipping Mary, which she's clearly done in the past, and Mary finds because she becomes a court official, as she says. I'm an official of the court. Yes. She finds some status that allows her to fight back and tells Proctor, "I will no longer be whipped." And you can't talk to me like this. And Abigail obviously finds a power from a position where she's powerless, having been chucked out of the house, and not much prospect. She finds power. albeit, she is co-opted by the powers that be even, but temporarily she finds that power, and she hopes to use it, of course, to secure herself a position as he can replace Elizabeth and Mary, John Proctor, and therefore find some security. Let's talk a bit about those characters actually now, John, in particular Elizabeth at the center of the play, because when we talked before about death of a salesman, I remember we talked about Miller's own definition of tragedy, and how in his eyes, tragedy was not limited to the high-born individuals like Greek heroes, but also to everyday people, what he called the common man. And John Proctor is very much a common man. He's a flawed man, as we talked about already, but a tragic hero by Miller's definition, isn't he? Well, yes, Miller said in tragedy in the common man that modern plays can be the stuff of tragedy. He said, "When a character perceives an assault on his dignity and challenges that assault on his dignity, that makes for tragedy." We certainly see it in Willy Lawman, we see it in Joe Cala, we see it in Eddie Carbone, and especially true of John Proctor as well. Now, the interesting thing about Proctor is, or Miller's definition, is the assault on the dignity usually comes from the outside, from outside forces, and that is clearly true with Proctor, but also Proctor's assault on his dignity is self-inflicted as well, because of his adultery with Abigail Williams, and that's at the core of his character, the fact that he's living with secret sin, secret guilt. He's walking around town as a very respected farmer, but within him is this guilt that is tearing at him. He sees himself as a fraud. He's a shame, Disney. He carries the shame of it, and his wife, Elizabeth, says to him, "The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you." Right, guilt and shame are very much associated as we know, and he hasn't forgiven himself, which of course he does at the end of the play. So, when she says he has his goodness, he has his dignity as well, and that is the stuff that sort of makes him a tragic hero in his acceptance of his flaws, acceptance of his misdeeds, and once we accept that, he's elevated to a modern tragic status. Miller said in Time Benz that he had found in John Proctor his tragic hero, and that his final resistance is a moment when an individual conscience was all that would keep the world from falling apart. So, not only, as you said earlier, that it's about a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be to secure one thing, his sense of personal dignity. So, we have this about his personal dignity, but also about standing up as an individual conscience on behalf of a world, and I think Miller, as we know with all of these people, that the health of the overall society depends on the integrity of these individuals, and they're standing up for these values. And this is what, of course, he would link back to Kazan and the American activities, is the moment when you have to stand up. The individual conscience stands up to keep the world from falling apart. And a good way to describe that, we see operating in a lot of Miller's plays, is what one critic called the circles of responsibility. So, the idea is to whom all we responsible, the inside circle, you're responsible to yourself. The next circle is responsible to your partner or your family, then outside that circle, is your society, and you're responsible to all of them. John practice personal conflict is with himself and his wife over his adultery, but that spills into Christian leaf and the belief of Salomon, especially in the theocracy, where sin is also a crime, as adultery is a crime as well. So, there you see it, working intimately together. It's a fantastic image, actually. It's so simple, but so powerful as an image of the responsibilities, and the moral value and integrity that's at the heart of this is the individual, and that they cannot stand alone. They are part of society, and that is part of what happens in the end, of course, John Parkter understands, as Rebecca Nurse does, as others do, that they are dependent on each other. They all have a responsibility to each other, not to name each other, and to stick to those principles. I wanted to talk a bit about Elizabeth and their relationship, because it's beautifully drawn. You talked about that first scene, when there is a frostiness underlying everything between them, because of what's gone on. I wonder how you just describe a little bit about how you see what's happened to them leading up to this, and what her perspective is on the relationship. I like that you said frostiness, because one of the best lines in act two, when Elizabeth and John are arguing about her not forgiving him. He says to Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer. That's just a powerful line of his perception about the way she's treating him. But the interesting thing about their relationship is how it grows in the time gap that we don't see them, because we don't see them together that much. We see him in act two together, and that scene where Hal asks them to name the commandments, and he forgets adultery, and she has to remind him. A wonderful, dramatic moment, yeah. There's no real interaction with them in act three, because they're both brought in as witnesses, and then we see the months later in act four, where I would say we see sort of a resolution of their relationship, where we see a development in her thought, where she says it was a cold wife, cold woman, to prompt luxury. There are some critics who say why does Elizabeth have to blame herself, and that is true. Why does she have to blame herself for prompting him to the affair with Abigail? We can argue that for a very long time, but she does say, yeah. Well, I think there's something important in the precedent of that as well, because the suggestions are, of course, that she has suffered from illness. She says in court that she was a long time sick after her last baby. It could have been postnatal, and he says at one point to her, I think you're sad again. Are you? Yes. Yes. So I think that there's a very strong hints that she's suffered from depression, and was unwell and unable, therefore, to respond to him. It's not necessarily natural that he takes advantage of Abigail, of course, but that could be some of the background to what happens in the affair. I think what's also there is that you can see that in that first scene, they are both carrying the hurt that has been caused by this affair. He is cross or frustrated that she continues to mistrust him and to judge him, but some of his frustration or anger even is his own guilt and shame. Yes. One of the phrases that comes back to me time and time again is James Joyce apparently said that all anger is anger with yourself. Yes. He certainly gives her evidence to be more suspicious when he obviously has told her that Abigail told him that it was not witchcraft, but he left out the part when he says to I don't think they'll believe me if we go to Salem because she said it to me alone in a room, and she said you were alone with him. And then, of course, what was going to be some kind of reproachment between them is now gone. Of course, at that moment then, Hale comes in to the scene and we don't see them again alone until act four, which of course is a resolution of their feelings towards each other, which is a very, very tender scene. Yes. Well, I think the precedent is there for that tenderness. I think you can sense this. It's there in that first scene that they are both hurt. And he says at one time, there's a wonderful line where he says in the first scene together, I mean to please you, Elizabeth, quietly to which she responds, I know it, John. So I think underneath, there is a bond and a love between them. And of course, this is sort of borne out by the way she behaves when she will not give him up, when she lies in the end to protect his integrity. And of course, as you say, the coming together in the end, she says, always says, it's a good man. He is a good man. And she is clearly the conduit to him accepting and understanding his goodness. That's why we need them together and alone in act four for that to happen. As interesting you mentioned, what does John feel for Abigail? And he doesn't admit to some softness at some point, I think. Yes, I may think of you softly. She says, another image in the play, you have a sense for heat. And I have heat, heat has drawn you to my window. I've seen you looking up. And he said, yeah, we may have looked up. And this is after the effect has ended. Yes. So an interesting raise about Abigail then. What's driving her? What are we to make of her? What are her motives? Why does she do what she does? Is she pure evil? The jury's out on Abigail, but I don't see her as purely evil in the way we look at her now because of those circumstances. She never will turn pure evil. But the key to understanding Abigail, I think, is what she says to John in their first scene together about him having awakened in her feelings that she didn't know she had. But certainly she does turn into the person of vengeance. Now another way to look at Abigail, which a lot of people don't see anymore, because Miller wrote a latest scene that he added to the play at the end of act two, a forest scene between Abigail and Proctor before it's going to go to court. It's very rare productions that use it, which give you another insight into Abigail. It's a scene that very much balances their feelings towards each other. Interesting, because there is a suggestion, isn't there, that Elizabeth picks up when she first suggests you go to the court and tell them what Abigail's all about? And he doesn't immediately do that and says, "I'll think on it." You know, is that because there's still some element of a thinking I need to protect her? Or is he just protecting his own reputation, knows that she can come back at him? But there may be some residue of something in that relationship. But the other point was something that came up earlier, I think you touched on, was that Abigail's in a difficult position. She's been thrown out of the only job she had, and there may be rumors about her reputation. In fact, Paris raises the question, "There are rumors about your reputation," and that would be the end of her, really. Well, that's one of her arguments for Elizabeth. She says, "Elisabeth is blackening my name in the village." Paris says, "I wonder why no other household has come for your services in the seven months since you've been dismissed from Goodie Proctor's service." And Abigail clearly says, "She's a cold, lying, sniveling woman," which does, of course, set you up for her motives to "replace Elizabeth as the wife of the house." I want to go back to something we said about the disenfranchised women because that certainly applies to Abigail. One of the important ways to go higher in the hierarchy in Puritan society was to be married. There were no options, very few options, to single women. So Abigail sees it this way through her relationship. But yes, she's cast out from the Proctor home. She's an orphan. She has to live off the largest of her uncle, Paris. And I would not call that largest. And she says to me, "Do you begrudge my bed, Uncle?" So we have to understand many of the motives that she has. I mean, she's certainly a manipulator, the way she can just take those other girls and lead them into court. And they all take cues from her. Well, and of course, she has the fervor of desperation of her position. It's a fight for survival. And as you say, the only option might be to marry. She also uses power over the girl. She's very threatening to them. She's threatened to batter any of them who tells that she was trying to conjure a spell in the woods. There's an interesting quote. Miller came across in the testimony of Reverend Paris in the original testimony of Abigail's against Elizabeth Proctor. He describes Abigail's fervor. And he interpreted it as the joyous terror of the killer about to strike at her former mistress. Yes. Fuelled by vengeance and the scent of victory. And I think the other thing is, of course, is that once they get swept up in this, they become celebrities. Yes. They're being applauded by the whole community. And it's like a drug. Fuelled there even greater ambition. Why wouldn't they want to continue this? A line that gets very overlooked is Abigail sort of threatens Danforth in act three during the investigations. Don't you think his power could be turned on you? And he's the ultimate power in the play. And she could accuse him as well. That's quite a shocking moment actually. You do think she's overstep the mark that this is all going to come tumbling down, but it's fascinating to watch. Abigail is the main accuser. And the interesting thing about the play is we talked about truths being thought as lies and lies being truth. A very important line in the play is when Proctor says, is the accuser always holy now just to make the accusation is the truth. And of course, that's going to apply to accusations that get me in our present day. Exactly. And this is a perfect segue to ask you what you see in this play that we recognize in our world today. Here's the irony of this play. We've spent a lot of time talking about the Puritans society and Salem Village and UAC and the Communist witch hunts. And in many ways today, the play has become absolutely divorced from those items. That's not your main to what the play tells us or it's relevance to our own time. Back in, I think, 65 or 66, when Olivier did the production in London, Militel's a story in time, Benz, that he was sitting in the theater and a woman and our husband were sitting in front of them. And the woman turned around to a husband and said, I think this play has something to do with that US Senator. The play had become totally divorced even by that time. That the play become more a comment on our current society. That is a play about power, the abuse of power. And that's why we've seen a lot of it in the last few years. I see it revised when there's political divisions. I mean, we had in the United States that Evo von Hove production in 2015 and 2016. And Lord knows we had political division in the United States over the election in 2016. And those political divisions are seen in those opposites of good and evil and dark and light. If you are a Republican, you are evil according to the Democrats. If you are a Democrat or liberal, you are evil according to the Republicans. You have it in the UK as well. Yes, we do. And that's one of the things that actually comes out so strongly because Militel talked about how in times of social uncertainty or deprivation, how rebellious feelings break out, people look for culprits as he put it, social disorder breeds suspicions. So people begin to lay into perceived culprits with all the force of their own frustrations. And we've seen this everywhere, whether it's you feel economically disadvantaged, then we have a backlash against immigration, for example, in many places where people's economic resources are being squeezed. And also, it seems to me that goes back to that point he made about hysteria and mystique that it seems very easy for mass hysteria to take root today. Doesn't it? The rapid reach of digital communication, particularly in the form of the reductive echo chamber of social media now, for example, that enables very simple messages or mantras to spread, like make America great again or take back control and Brexit here. And that very quickly becomes very divisive, polarize. And so that either you are in or you are not and dissent becomes difficult. Well, I think there was one line in the play with particularly chilling when Judge Danforth says the person is either with this court or he must be counted against it. Exactly. So if you do not subscribe, then you must be guilty. It's not hard to see that in a world where the truth is no longer similarly valued. In a world of Trump and dare I say it, Boris Johnson, where truth no longer seems to be objective and cannot be called at. It's simply a subjective choice that you're either a believer or you're not. And then like we talk about the theocracy, the institutions can become instruments of these new standards like the Supreme Court of America, even dare I say, Steve. Absolutely. You know, I've been saying this often and I can't believe I say it, but Donald Trump is probably the best advertisement for revival of Miller plays that we've ever seen. I mean, while he was president, he always described the press as the enemy of the people. And of course, we saw revivals of that Miller and Ibsen play and his favorite phrase is to subscribe all the attacks on him as witch hunts. Yes. He used it just three days ago. And I want to say something to talk about politics. Miller himself wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times. I think it was called Clinton in Salem when Clinton had that Monica Lewinsky affair and was subject to the Congressional impeachment. Millosaurid Clinton in Salem because you saw the the connections between it. So it's a play that has life because it's about the abuse of power wherever and however it occurs. And when people are unfairly interrogated, whether it's Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pinochet and Chile, we see parallels in those kinds of interrogations that go on even today, as you say, even in in our own political systems and courts. So it's institutionalized but it's also sort of moral absolutism of any kind, personal even. That can be so aggressive against alternative opinion. It's a cancel culture. We demonize each other. We become self-righteous, intolerant. Yeah. Fundamentalists of any kind religious political moral pose these dangers. There's another wonderful phrase from Reverend Hale of all people who says, "Cleave to no faith when faith brings blood." Well, he could have been talking about any religion over history, couldn't he? I suppose. Yes. But then I think it also comes back to that personal that I think we talked to earlier about the tragic hero who stands up ultimately. And Proctor quotes the angel Raphael in the Bible, "Do that which is good and no harm shall come to thee." Well, the play seems to want us to believe that. I'm sure. But I'm not sure that it doesn't demonstrate that it may not always be true. I mean, you know, some of these people pay with their lives. Yes. Proctor in particular. And so whether that is the last bulwark against institutional abuse and corruption, I don't know. Are we supposed to feel that faith? Do you think, Steve? Well, if we're going to say John Proctor is, I know if this quite answers the question this way, if we're going to say John Proctor is a tragic hero, the idea of tragedy is for us. And we'll go back to the Greeks. I think it applies to us too. We look at that tragic hero and we look in awe, pity and fear that the same thing can happen to us. And if we see Proctor as a model, as a warning, an example of what can happen to us, then when we have to fight the power, we can remember those characters who did it better maybe than we can. It still does come down to the individual standing up. Yes, yes. Because tyranny obviously oppresses the value of the individual. It forces us into unnatural behavior towards others, for example. And Miller basically said that the real story of Salem is the riffs and betrayals within and between families, friends and neighbors, what he called the breaking of charity with one another. And it's that sort of responsibility to others going back to your circles. Yes, that's possibly the most central thing in all of this. I absolutely agree with that because accepting consequences on yourself is one thing, but accepting understanding consequences for yourself as they relate to society is the most difficult thing to do, I think. And as what we see Proctor does, sacrifices himself for the greater good despite the injustice of what's going on because ultimately the injustice will be revealed as ultimately happened at Salem, as ultimately happened with our own witch hunts. Yes, so Miller finishes the published text with an epilogue which says that after the fever died down, it passed in other words. It's sometimes hard to think that's the case. And if we see cycles in history, maybe that is what happens, but you know, we have to cling on to those individual examples. It's certainly a cautionary tale. Steve, thank you so much. We've come to the end. Yeah, this is wonderful. Great. One I wanted to ask you before you go. One of the traditions of the podcast is I'd like to ask my guest for the recommendation of a play that we could cover in a future episode or one that's just a personal favorite. Now as I recall, when we last met, you chose streetcar named desire. Yes, that's true. Which I'm still determined to do. And in fact, there's a production coming to London later this year, which may give me the occasion to do that play. Have you got another one you might recommend for us? Okay, I'm going to give you two. Maybe the first one doesn't count because it's a Miller play. No, that counts. But only because I mentioned at the beginning of our talk, when you asked me to say, where the crucible fit in Miller's Korea, I mentioned all my sons, which you've done, the death of a salesman, which you've done, the crucible, which you are now doing. If you do a view from the bridge in the future, that will be Miller's four great masterpieces. And of course, the two-act version of a view from the bridge premiered in London. So it has an important place in Miller's history, right? The one act was in New York. The two act was in 1956 in London. So if you don't want me to do a Miller play, the play I'm going to give you is my favorite. I'm going to say English play. I think it's the greatest play of the post-World War II period and that is Arcadia by Tom. You've only done Leopold's not, but you should do Arcadia. And here's my segue. We talked a lot about opposites with the crucible, and Arcadia is a play of opposites, of order and disorder, classicism and romanticism, romanticism and modernism, past and present, certain uncertain chaos order. So please do that. I would love to do that. It's one of my favorites. Thank you. And definitely a view from the bridge, which I will have to get you back to do Steve. I'll come back for that one. Great. Well, lovely to see you. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. It's been great. As the curtain falls on the drum rolls that signal the commencement of the hanging of John Proctor, and the reverend hail weeps in desperate, vain prayer, the prospect for the people of Salem seems bleak. What can stop the tide of terror that swells when we are tempted to condemn others so absolutely? The sun that shines on Elizabeth Proctor's face and her cry of faith in her husband's goodness are the light in the darkness, the individual voices of integrity that stand up against tyranny despite harm to themselves. Perhaps the angel Raphael's precept should be, do that which is good and no harm shall come to others. Thanks for listening. See you next time. To listen to other episodes and to read additional footnotes about each episode, please visit us at www.theplaypodcast.com. Patrons of the Play Podcast are able to listen to recordings of the additional footnotes we compile about each play, as well as enjoy exclusive access to the play review, bonus episodes in which I review current productions that I see in my regular theatre going. To find out how to become a patron, please visit patreon.com/theplaypodcast. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook at the playpod and on Instagram at the playpodcast. Thanks again for listening and for your support. See you next time. 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