The Crucible
Subtitle: A Play in Four Acts
By: Arthur Miller ; with an introduction by Christopher Bigsby.
Series: Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York, N. Y., USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 143
ISBN-13: 9780140189643
Copyright date: 1995
Subjects: Trials (Witchcraft) -- Drama; Salem (Mass.) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Drama
Genres: Drama.
Description: "I believe that the reader will discover here the essential nature of one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history", Arthur Miller wrote in an introduction to The Crucible, his classic play about the witch-hunts and trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. Based on historical people and real events, Miller's drama is a searing portrait of a community engulfed by hysteria. In the rigid theocracy of Salem, rumors that women are practicing witchcraft galvanize the town's most basic fears and suspicions; and when a young girl accuses Elizabeth Proctor of being a witch, self-righteous church leaders and townspeople insist that Elizabeth be brought to trial. The ruthlessness of the prosecutors and the eagerness of neighbor to testify against neighbor brilliantly illuminate the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence. 

Written in 1953, The Crucible is a mirror Miller uses to reflect the anti-communist hysteria inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch-hunts" in the United States. Within the text itself, Miller contemplates the parallels, writing "Political opposition...is given an inhumane overlay, which then justifies the abrogation of all normally applied customs of civilized behavior. A political policy is equated with moral right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence".
(back cover)
Notes: CAN/USA
Twentieth-Century Classics
Table of contents: title: Editor's Note p. vii; title: Introduction p. 1; title: The Crucible p. 3; title: Precision and Pseudo Precision in the Crucible p. 19; title: The Long Shadow of the Law: the Crucible p. 33; title: Arthur Miller's the Crucible: Background and Sources p. 55; title: John Proctor's Playing in the Crucible p. 69; title: The Crucible of History: Arthur Miller's John Proctor p. 77; title: History, Myth, and Name Magic in Arthur Miller's the Crucible p. 83; title: History and Other Spectres in Arthur Miller's the Crucible p. 95; title: The Crucible p. 113; title: Betrayal and Blessedness: Explorations of Feminine Power in the Crucible, a View from; title: the Bridge, and After the Fall; title: p. 123; title: John Proctor and the Crucible of Individuation in Arthur Miller's the Crucible p. 153; title: Re(dis)covering the Witches in Arthur Miller's the Crucible: a Feminist Reading p. 165; title: Arthur Miller's ""Weight of Truth"" in the Crucible p. 177; title: Chronology p. 187; title: Contributors p. 193; title: Bibliography p. 195; title: Acknowledgments p. 197; title: Index p. 199