CUSHING STROUT
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Arthur Miller's historical play,
The Crucible,
widely per–
formed in Europe as well as America, may illustrate the problem
of analogical history: Can the dramatist speak about both the
1690s and the 1950s, at the same time, interpreting both a Puri–
tan witchcraft panic and a demagogic anticommunism as the
same phenomenon? Or will he inevitably beg too many ques–
tions about specific events, or rise to an abstract level of fatal
vagueness? At one level, Miller's witch-hunt analogy works very
well in showing the social paranoia at work in both the 1690s
and the 1950s, because witches for New England Puritans were,
indeed, traitors who had dedicated themselves to subverting the
community. (The Puritan legal standard for convicting witches–
the testimony of two witnesses to overt actions-was even remark–
ably similar to the one later enshrined in the treason clause of the
U.S. Constitution.) Moreover, Miller rightly emphasizes that re–
pression, confession, and repentance were linked together in
both periods. Miller's view of the accused and the accusers rep–
resenting competing factions in Salem's social and economic life
is also true to the best and most recent study
(Salem Possessed)
by two historians (Boyer and Nissenbaum) of the witchcraft panic.
His hero John Proctor was, in fact, a representative victim, ac–
cording to the historians, because he was a prosperous farmer
and tavern keeper, whose rising status was likely to affront those
provincials who feared that success under mercantile capitalism
was likely to be a sure sign of that restless discontent which sup–
posedly seduced Puritans into being witches.
The difficulty with Miller's analogy is that he projected two
features of his present world into the Puritan village. While
there is no credence given to witchcraft demonism in his play, he
presents Puritan political authority as if
it
were demonic. One
would never know from his account that the clergy criticized the
court for its dependence on specious "spectral evidence" or that
Governor Phips put a stop to the trials and issued a general par–
don. But the more subtle problem is that Miller was most indig–
nant about a small minority of those called before congressional
committees, the artists who informed on the political radicalism
of their former associates. When he appeared before such a
committee, after he had written his play, he honorably refused to
name the names of others. His indignation is understandable be–
cause investigators had disregarded the First Amendment to the
