(or Picky, Picky, Picky...)

by Margo Burns

Revised: 2/22/10

A NOTE ON THE HISTORICAL ACCURACY OF THIS PLAY

by Arthur Miller

"This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian. Dramatic purposes have sometimes required many characters to be fused into one; the number of girls involved in the 'crying out' has been reduced; Abigail's age has been raised; while there were several judges of almost equal authority, I have symbolized them all in Hathorne and Danforth. However, I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history. The fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model, and there is no one in the drama who did not play a similar-and in some cases exactly the same-role in history.

"As for the characters of the persons, little is known about most of them except what may be surmised from a few letters, the trial record, certain broadsides written at the time, and references to their conduct in sources of varying reliability. They may therefore be taken as creations of my own, drawn to the best of my ability in conformity with their known behavior, except as indicated in the commentary I have written for this text."

Because I've been working with the materials of the Salem Witch Trails of 1692 for so long as an academic historian, many people have asked me if I've seen the play or film The Crucible, and what I think of it. Miller created works of art, inspired by the actual events for the artistic/political purposes Miller intended: first produced on Broadway on January 22, 1953, it was in response to the panic caused by irrational fear of Communism during the Cold War which resulted in the hearings by the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. * In Miller's tales (there are slight differences, which I won't bother to get into unless it's a major difference), a lovelorn teenager is spurned by the married man she loves, and in her revenge, she fans a whole community into a blood-lust frenzy. This is simply not history. The real story is far more complex, dramatic, and interesting -- and well worth exploring. This page, however, is only dedicated to separating the fact from the fiction in Miller's work.

Most popular understandings of the tale include their own inaccuracies -- for instance, that the witches were burned to death. People condemned as witches in New England were not burned, but hanged, and in the aftermath of the events in Salem, it was generally agreed that none of them had actually been witches at all. Some modern versions cast the story as something that has to do with intolerance of difference, that the accused were really just oddballs that the community tacitly approved getting rid of, but most of the people who were accused, convicted and executed in Salem were remarkable by their very adherence to community norms. In the 1970s, a theory was put forth that the afflicted had suffered from hallucinations from eating moldy rye wheat -- ergotism -- and although that theory has generally been refuted, its life continues in the popular explanation of the events. (A recent biological theory which also fails to hold up under the scrutiny of medical and Salem scholars alike, however, is that the afflicted suffered from encephalitis lethargica.) Lastly, Rev. Parris' slave woman, Tituba, is usually assumed to have been of Black African descent, but recent research indicates she was Amerindian, probably South American Arawak, always being referred to in the documents of the period as "an Indian woman." Had she been African or Black, she would have been so described.

As for Miller's tellings of the tale, I am always distracted by the wide variety of minor historical inaccuracies when I am exposed to his play or movie. Call me picky, but I'm not a dolt: I know about artistic license and Miller's freedom to use the material any way he chooses to, so please don't bother lecturing me about it. This page is part of a site about the history of 17th Century Colonial New England, not about literature, theater, or Arthur Miller, even though you may have landed smack dab in the middle of the site thanks to a search engine hit for information about Miller.

One reason I am providing this page is because 1) actors contact me about making their portrayals of characters in the play "more accurate" -- when that is impossible without drastically altering Miller's work because the characters in his play are simply not the real people who lived, even though they may share names and basic fates, and 2) students are given assignments in their English classes to find out more about what really happened. (American high school juniors in honors and AP classes seem to be the most frequent visitors.) I can be an ornery cuss when it comes to being asked the same literature questions that I've already said I don't care to answer because I am an historian, so before you even think of writing to ask me a question about the play, please read through my list of frequently-asked questions where I will give you what answers I have to offer to the most questions I am most commonly asked -- be prepared: they may not be the answers you want to hear. I am not an on-line encyclopedia.

Here's my list of historical inaccuracies in the play/screenplay:

• Betty Parris' mother was not dead, but very much alive at the time. She died in 1696, four years after the events.
  
  
• Soon after the legal proceedings began, Betty was shuttled off to live in Salem Town with Stephen Sewall's family. Stephen was the clerk of the Court, brother of Judge Samuel Sewall.
  
  
• The Parris family also included two other children -- an older brother, Thomas (b. 1681), and a younger sister, Susannah (b. 1687) -- not just Betty and her relative Abigail, who was probably born around 1681.
  
  
• Abigail Williams is often called Rev. Parris' "niece" but in fact there is no genealogical evidence to prove their familial relationship. She is sometimes in the original texts referred to as his "kinfolk" however.
  
  
• Miller admits in the introduction to the play that he boosted Abigail Williams' age to 17 even though the real girl was only 11, but he never mentions that John Proctor was 60 and Elizabeth, 41, was his third wife. Proctor was not a farmer but a tavern keeper. Living with them was their daughter aged 15, their son who was 17, and John's 33-year-old son from his first marriage. Everyone in the family was eventually accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth Proctor was indeed pregnant, during the trial, and did have a temporary stay of execution after convicted, which ultimately spared her life because it extended past the end of the period that the executions were taking place.
  
  
• The first two girls to become afflicted were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, not Ann Putnam, and they had violent, physical fits, not a sleep that they could not wake from.
  
  
• There never was any wild dancing rite in the woods led by Tituba, and certainly Rev. Parris never stumbled upon them. Some of the local girls had attempted to divine the occupations of their future husbands with an egg in a glass -- crystal-ball style. Tituba and her husband, John Indian (absent in Miller's telling), were asked by a neighbor, Mary Sibley, to bake a special "witch cake," -- made of rye and the girls' urine, fed to a dog -- European white magic to ascertain who the witch was who was afflicting the girls.
  
  
• The Putnam's daughter was not named Ruth, but Ann, like her mother, probably changed by Miller so the audience wouldn't confuse the mother and the daughter. In reality, the mother was referred to as "Ann Putnam Senior" and the daughter as "Ann Putnam Junior."
  
  
• Ann/Ruth was not the only Putnam child out of eight to survive infancy. In 1692, the Putnams had six living children, Ann being the eldest, down to 1-year-old Timothy. Ann Putnam Sr. was pregnant during most of 1692. Ann Sr. and her sister, however did lose a fair number of infants, though certainly not all, and by comparison, the Nurse family lost remarkably few for the time.
  
  
• Rev. Parris claims to Giles Corey that he is a "graduate of Harvard" -- he did not in fact graduate from Harvard, although he had attended for a while and dropped out.
  
  
• The judges in The Crucible are Samuel Sewall, Thomas Danforth, and John Hathorne. The full panel of magistrates for the special Court of Oyer and Terminer were in fact named by the new charter, which arrived in Massachusetts on May 14, 1692 were William Stoughton, John Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney, Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin and Peter Sergeant. Five of these eight had to be present to form a presiding bench, and at least one of those five had to be Stoughton, Richards, or Gedney. Thomas Danforth the Deputy Governor, joined the magistrates on occasion as the presiding magistrate.
  
  
• The events portrayed here were the examinations of the accused in Salem Village from March to April, in the context of a special court of "Oyer and Terminer." These were not the actual trials, per se, which began later, in June 1692. The procedure was basically this: someone would bring a complaint to the authorities, and the authorities would decide if there was enough reason to send the sheriff or other law enforcement officer to arrest them. While this was happening, depositions -- statements people made on paper outside of court -- were taken and evidence gathered, typically against the accused. After evidence or charges were presented, and depositions sworn to before the court, the grand jury would decide whether to indict the person, and if so, on what charges. If indicted, the person's case would then go to a petit jury, or to "trial" something like we know it only much faster, to decide guilt or innocence. Guilt in a case of witchcraft in 1692 came with an automatic sentence of death by hanging, as per English law.
  
  
• Saltonstall was one of the original magistrates, but quit early on because of the reservations portrayed as attributed to Sewall's character in the play. Of the magistrates, only Sewall ever expressed public regret for his actions, asking in 1696 to have his minister, Rev. Samuel Willard, read a statement from the pulpit of this church to the congregation, accepting his share of the blame for the trials.
  
  
• Rebecca Nurse was hanged on July 19, John Proctor on August 19, and Martha Corey on September 22 -- not all on the same day on the same gallows. And the only person executed who recited the Lord's Prayer on the gallows was Rev. George Burroughs -- which caused quite a stir since it was generally believed at the time that a witch could not say the Lord's Prayer without making a mistake. They also would not have been hanged while praying, since the condemned were always allowed their last words and prayers.
  
  
• Reverend Hale would not have signed any "death warrants," as he claims to have signed 17 in the play. That was not for the clergy to do. Both existing death warrants are signed by William Stoughton.
  
  
• The elderly George Jacobs was not accused of sending his spirit in through the window to lie on the Putnam's daughter -- in fact, it was usually quite the opposite case: women such as Bridget Bishop were accused of sending their spirits into men's bedrooms to lie on them. In that period, women were perceived as the lusty, sexual creatures whose allure men must guard against!
  
  
• The hysteria did not die out "as more and more people refused to save themselves by giving false confessions," as the epilogue of the movie states. The opposite was true: more and more people were giving false confessions and four women actually pled guilty to the charges. Some historians claim that this was because it became apparent that confession would save one from the noose, but there is evidence that the Court was planning to execute the confessors as well. What ended the trials was the intervention of Governor William Phips. Contrary to what Phips told the Crown in England, he was not off in Maine fighting the Indians in King William's War through that summer, since he attended governor's council meetings regularly that summer, which were also attended by the magistrates. But public opinion of the trials did take a turn. There were over two hundred people in prison when the general reprieve was given, but they were not released until they paid their prison fees. Neither did the tide turn when Abigail Williams accused Rev. Hale's wife, as the play claims -- although the "afflicted" did start accusing a lot more people far and wide to the point of absurdity, including various people around in other Massachusetts towns whom they had never laid eyes on, including notable people such as the famous hero Capt. John Alden (who escaped after being arrested).
  
  
• Abigail Williams probably couldn't have laid her hands on 31 pounds in Samuel Parris' house, to run away with John Proctor, when Parris' annual salary was contracted at 66 pounds, only a third of which was paid in money. The rest was to be paid in foodstuffs and other supplies, but he even then, he had continual disputes with the parishioners about supplying him with much-needed firewood they owed him.
  
  
• Certain key people in the real events appear nowhere in Miller's play: John Indian, Rev. Nicholas Noyes, Sarah Cloyce, and most notably, Cotton Mather.
  
  
• Giles Corey was not executed for refusing to name a witness, as portrayed in the movie. The play is accurate: he was accused of witchcraft, and refused to enter a plea, which held up the proceedings, since the law of the time required that the accused enter a plea. He was pressed to death with stones, but the method was used to try to force him to enter a plea so that his trial could proceed. Corey probably realized that if he was tried at all, he would be executed, and his children would be disinherited. (Interestingly, Miller wrote both the play and the screenplay... Who knows why he changed it to a less-accurate explanation for his punishment and execution?)
  
  
• "The afflicted" comprised not just a group of a dozen teenage girls -- there were men and adult women who were also "afflicted," including John Indian, Ann Putnam, Sr., and Sarah Bibber -- or anyone in Andover, where more people were accused than in Salem Village!
  
  
• There's a tiny scene in the movie with a goat getting into someone's garden and tempers flaring -- the actual history is that three years before the witchcraft accusations, a neighbor's pigs got into the Nurse family's fields, and Rebecca Nurse flew off the handle yelling at him about it. Soon thereafter, the neighbor had an apparent stroke and died within a few months. This was seen as evidence in 1692 of Rebecca Nurse's witchcraft.

NOTE: All of the above can be verified through primary sources, which are not listed here only to avoid providing an easy on-line source of plagiarism -- not that your teacher couldn't spot a ringer like this one from a mile away. (Trust me: your teachers can usually tell when you are plagiarizing. If you think you are "getting away with it," it may just be a temporary thing while they figure out how to prove it or catch you at it. Do your own work.) Everything stated here can be corroborated with a little research of your own, and isn't that the point of most school assignments? Start with the the searchable on-line edition of The Salem Witchcraft Papers and with the books listed in my bibliography.

Now I have a few questions, for anyone who is inclined to think about them or who needs an idea to start writing a paper:

1. It may not matter if one's sole interest is in Miller work as literature or theater, but what happens when people only know history through creative works of art and not from primary sources and facts, letting someone else pick and choose between which facts to include and which to alter for their own artistic purposes and political arguments?
   
   
2. What are the current-day implications of the racial misidentification of Tituba as "black" or "African" in many high school history books and Miller's play written in the 1950s, when all of the primary sources by the people who actually knew the real woman referred to her as "Indian"? What would happen to Miller's story if Tituba were not portrayed as the well-worn American stereotype of a Black slave woman circa 1850 practicing voodoo, but as a Christianized Indian whose only use of magic was European white magic at the instruction of her English neighbors?
   
   
3. Since there never was a spurned lover stirring things up in Salem Village and there is no evidence from the time that Tituba practiced Caribbean Black Magic, yet these trials and executions actually still took place, how can you explain why they occurred?
   
   
4. As a result of reading Miller's play or seeing the movie, are you more interested in what actually happened in Salem in 1692, what actually happened during McCarthyism in the 1950's, or what happens when an illicit teenage lover is spurned? What is it about Miller's work that prompts your interest in that direction?
   
   
5. Accusations of sexual-abuse against childcare providers are now sometimes referred to as "witch hunts" when the accusers are suspected of lying, as in Miller's play, yet children's advocates tell us that we must believe children's claims of abuse because it certainly -- horribly -- does occur. How can the veracity of children's testimony be evaluated when children have been proven to be very impressionable and eager to give the answers that adults lead them to give?
   
   
6. Why do teachers assign projects to their students to compare the events in the play to what really happened historically? What kind of conclusions do teachers expect their students to make about how to navigate between art and history when faced with the kind of information provided on this page?

* Please note: The play premiered before anti-Communist Senator Joseph McCarthy's actual participation started on Feb. 3, 1953. The House Committee on Unamerican Activities (HCUA), however, began their inquiries earlier than McCarthy's participataion. Elia Kazan's testimony before it -- which is assumed to have influenced Miller -- was on April 12th, 1952. Do not write to me asking about any specifics of the events in the 1950s: that's not my area of expertise.

© 1997, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 Margo Burns

Return to 17th c. Index Page.
This page was last updated 02/22/10 by Margo Burns, .