 Hello and welcome back. Now in this video, we'll be going over a revision summary of Arthur Miller's infamous play The Crucible. This video is really useful if you're studying this play as part of your coursework or exams, so let's get started. Now in this video, we will discuss context. Do you remember that? Knowing the contextual events influencing this play is essential, so we'll discuss two major contextual factors including the same Salem trials and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. So let's begin by looking at the Salem witch trials. Now firstly, what you need to remember is that The Crucible takes for its point of departure the witch trials in 1692. However, this play also reflects Miller's reaction to how the House of Un-American Activities Committee, the HUAC, operated at the time when the play was written and the dangers of the McCarthyist fervor that gripped America in the 1950s. So it's typical of his work with its sense of purpose, humanity, and the desire to bring society to a better understanding. Now, Miller's interest in the Salem witch trials was actually prompted by reading Marion Starkey's The Devils in Massachusetts in 1949, which suggested that attitudes towards race and nationality during the Second World War made the Salem witch trials an allegory for that period, in other words a representation of that period. While Miller saw additional parallels with the climate of the 1950s, he decided to research the original trials by visiting the Historical Society in Salem, Massachusetts, and there he found the core of his plot in Charles W. Upham's 1867 Salem witchcraft, in which all of the play's characters are referred to and many of its events are related. He also read the original court transcripts of these trials. Now, remember that Salem itself was settled in 1629, but by the 1690s it had become divided between the agricultural farms of Salem Village and the adjacent, more mercantile port of Salem Town. There was much rivalry between the two and jealousy of those like the nurses and proctors who owned property on the lucrative roadway between them. In January 1692, the Reverend Parris' daughter, Betty, aged 9 and her cousin Abigail, aged 11, apparently became afflicted with contortions and fits, making complaints about being pinched and pricked with pins. After, the local daughter found no physical evidence for their conditions and other girls experienced the same symptoms, witchcraft was suspected at the time. Now, Parris' slave Tituba was asked to bake a witch cake to discover who's responsible for this. Soon after, Thomas Partnum and other men of the town accused Tituba, the slave, and two disruptible women of the neighborhood, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, of causing these afflictions. Examined in March by the local magistrates John Hathen and John Corwin, Tituba confessed and all three were sent to jail in Boston. More accusations then followed from the girls, including ones against Martha Corey, who had voiced skepticism over the credibility, as well as the Rican nurse and Elizabeth Proctor. The local innkeeper John Proctor, who'd written to Boston complaining about the proceeding, was imprisoned in April after objecting to his wife's arrest during Deputy Governor Danforth's examination. Even a former minister of the town, George Barris, was accused and three of Proctor's children After Osborne had died in jail, magistrates were assigned to trials beginning in May, by which month's end there were 62 people in custody and more to follow. Most of the accused were found guilty on controversial and very questionable evidence, and they afflicted with claim and apparition of the accused had attacked them, and since the courts decided that the devil needed a person's permission to take the bodily form, the accusations were considered believable. Some confessed, usually after being very unpleasantly cross-examined, or condemning testimony was given against them from other self-confessed witches. Discoveries of poppets, ointments, horoscopes or books on cemetery were also considered as evidence against people. Now, though several men were accused, the majority were women, as they were considered the weak agenda and therefore more susceptible to the devil. After being interrogated, the accused would later stand trial at which most were condemned to death. The first to be hanged on 10th of June was Bridget Bishop, an outspoken woman close to 60 years old. She claimed innocence even to the moment of her death. Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good and three other women, according to these original transcripts, were also hanged in July. Elizabeth was given a stay of execution because she was pregnant. In other words, she was pronounced to be executed, however given she was pregnant, they were not going to kill her. But Procter, her husband, was hanged alongside boroughs and three others on the 19th of August. Boroughs unsettled onlookers by reciting the Lord's Prayer on the scaffold, a feat supposedly impossible for an agent of the devil. Martha was then hanged on September along with seven others and all of them were excommunicated and none were allowed proper burial. The courts were then dismissed in October after several complaints and when they were reconvened in the following year, with Danforth serving for the first time, evidence based on apparitions was no longer admissible. Although three additional women were found guilty, many charges were dismissed, there were no more hangings and by March, the trials had been much discredited. By May, Elizabeth and the rest of the prisoners were released. One judge called Sammin Seawall, repudiated the trials and formally apologized. He would then go on to write the first attack on slavery in America. Hale, who was the great grandfather of the American Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale, had changed his mind late in the court proceedings after his wife was also accused of witchcraft. She was acquitted and he would go on to speak out against the trials, publishing a highly critical text on the proceedings of 1697 court, a modest inquiry into the nature of witchcraft. In 1702, the general court declared the 1692 trials unlawful and by 1711 restitutions were made to victims. Then in 1752, Salem village was then renamed Denver's but it would not be until 1957 that Massachusetts made a formal apology for this debacle and on 1992, on the 300th anniversary of the trials, a park in Salem was opened with a stone bench in memory of those executed and Miller did speak at this dedication ceremony. Now in the note at the beginning of the play, Miller himself declares that his account is predominantly truthful and while he has made some changes for dramatic purposes, the nature of the events themselves is actually historically accurate and the major alterations are the fusing of various original characters into a single representative, reducing both the number of judges and the girls crying out slight alterations to the timeline and locations decreasing Proctor's age. So originally in his 60s with Elizabeth his third wife being 20 years younger than him and of course increasing Abigail's age from 11 to allow the possibility of an affair as well as making her the girl who denounces Elizabeth. Whilst Miller based characters on what he learned through letters, records and reports, Miller did ask for them to be properly considered as creations of his own drawn to the best of his ability and conformity with their own behavior. Now critics, despite this disclaimer that he mentioned, noticed a number of the plays historical inaccuracy. Since the 1958 edition, however, the play does contain additional notes detailing the situation of Salem society in the 1690s and these supply facts, regarding the lives of the main characters involved that go beyond the events of the play itself and stand as a tribute to the extent of Miller's research. Now many details in this play, the crucible, are firmly supported by trial transcripts and other records at the time such as Serra Good's condemnation on being unable to recite the Ten Commandments, the Putnam's rivalry and desire for more land, Rebecca's steadfast claim of innocence, Giles' quarries complained against his wife preventing him from saying his prayers and his death by being crushed under stones. There's also proof of Mary Warren's poppet being given to Elizabeth as well as her repudiation of the girl's accusations and subsequent change of heart. Now notable details from Miller's dramatic imagination include the presentation of Abigail and her lost for Proctor, the character development of both Proctors with John especially being depicted as a liberated thinker and Proctor's subsequent confession, recantation and death alongside Rebecca and Martha and all three of course in the real life events were hanged on different dates. Miller also makes Governor Danforth and Reverend Hill the central and direct antagonist to Proctor. Arthur, the great-great-grandfather of the writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, was probably the most despicable of the real judges being the only one who never publicly repented the key part that he played in the trials. It was actually the uncompromising moral absolutism of that eras, Puritans that Miller wanted to capture and expose. The original prosecution was as blind to facts and relentless as they actually appear in the play and there were many like the Putnam's who took full mercenary advantage of the situation or stood by and allowed the atrocities to happen. Now the other important contextual factor to be aware of and to know very very well is to do with the House Committee on Un-American Activities also known as HUAC. Now do bear in mind that the concept of HUAC had began in 1938 with the DICE Committee and it was charged with investigating German-American involvement in Nazi and KKK activity but the committee soon became more interested in the communist threat. Now this committee had been behind the closing of the Federal Theater Project that Miller had briefly joined after his graduation from the University of Michigan and they concluded incorrectly that it was being overtly influenced by the communist party. Now HUAC became a permanent committee in 1946 charged to investigate suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked the form of government guaranteed by our constitution according to them but the real target was really anyone who exhibited left of center sympathies. People were subpoenaed to prove that they were not or had never been active in the communist party and if they did confess to any such activity they were expected to name names of anyone else who might have been involved. Now it was not illegal in the US at the time to belong to the communist party but HUAC could convict anyone of contempt of court if they refused to cooperate and send them to jail. This therefore conveyed the implication that to be a communist sympathizer was actually a criminal act despite the law of the USA. People were often called before HUAC on inconclusive or even questionable evidence and even if the committee's investigation came up empty many lives were subsequently ruined. Suspicion and ostracism led to loss of employment and the end of many professional careers in this period. Few noticed while the committee investigated government employees but when this committee started to go after more prominent public figures and celebrities in the entertainment industry beginning with an investigation into the alleged communist propaganda in the Hollywood film industry HUAC caught people's attention. After nine days of hearings in 1947 a group of writers and actors was convicted on charges of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions. They were known as the Hollywood 10 and each of them took the fifth amendment refusing to testify on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves. Now even though none had confessed to any communist sympathies that were sent to jail for sentences ranging from six to 12 months and subsequently blacklisted which meant they could not be offered work. An example of such harsh treatment scared many into going along with whatever the committee asked rather than facing punishment themselves. The hearings then escalated in the 1950s and the anti-communist fervour that they provoked became known as McCarthyism named after its instigator Senator Joseph McCarthy. Now what's interesting is that his involvement began in 1950 with a speech to a Republican women's club where a flood of press attention followed and then he produced a piece of paper that he claimed to contain a list of known communists working for the state department. However McCarthy did serve on committees covering both government and military investigations and communist infiltration. However when he was US senator he actually didn't serve on HUSC however his scaremongering helped to create the atmosphere that gave the House committee its credibility. Now in Miller's 1999 essay called The Crucible in History he actually discusses what he saw was the mood of the 1950s and he admits that it was partly his horror of what he saw that inspired him to write this play as a means of conveying his anger at such proceedings and exposing the collateral damage that they caused. Connecting McCarthyism to the way people acted in Salem Miller felt that the 1950 American vision of communism was a moral issue which viewed communists as in league with the devil. This he linked to the Puritan sense of rectitude that seemed to suggest that anyone with whom they disagreed must be allied to Satan. Now Miller initially resisted the idea of depicting the HUSC hearings in the form of an old-fashioned witch trial as too obvious. However as the HUSC hearings grew more ritualistic and cruelly pointless he could no longer resist despite the obvious risks for the parallels was far too apt to ignore. He saw how both sets of hearings had definite structure behind them designed to make people publicly confess. In both cases the judges knew in advance all of the information for the urge they asked. The main difference was that the Salem hearings had greater legality as it was against the law to be a witch but was not legal to be a communist in 1950s America. Miller does not attempt a one-to-one analogy between his characters and those involved in HUSC because this would have made the play too immediately paradigmatic and temporal. Miller himself appeared before HUAC three years after he wrote The Crucible. Summoned before a group of hostile opportunistic politicians he presented a speech that virtually echoed that of John Proctor in which he too refused to name names or bring trouble on anyone else. Miller was then convicted of contempt but his lawyer was able to get his one-year sentence reduced to the suspension of a single month and a $500 fine and rather than accept a conviction that represented wrongdoing Miller still appealed. By August the following year the conviction was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals on the grounds that the questions he had been asked sub no legislative purpose. Miller insisted that while McCarthyism may have informed The Crucible it's not a major theme. We'll never go inside the courtroom because Miller isn't interested in the proceedings as much as the motivations behind them and the fears and reactions of those involved. The play's continued success depends on the realisation that it offers more than a straightforward history lesson of either HUAC or the witch trials. Rather the play The Crucible explores the prevailing conditions that precipitate and cause such events to happen. Now this allows Miller's play a continuing resonance as historical conditions of persecution intolerance and sanctimonious dedication continue to repeat themselves in a variety of political and historical circumstances. So The Crucible really speaks to every conflict between individual conscience and tyranny whether it's a tyranny of religion, government, race, economics or simply that of public opinion. Connections to past and present injustices and periods of overly zealous patriotism or fundamental fervour find the resonance in Miller's work. Miller did view the right-wing attacks on President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair as redolent of the sailor magistrates attacking the accused while reveling in the potent sexual details of a supposed allegiance to the devil and directing the play in 2006. The playwright Dominic Cook saw parallels to Bush and Blair generating hysteria over terrorism and the frightening rise of Christian fundamentalism in the US. So that's all when it comes to understanding the most important contextual factors that influence the play The Crucible. If you found this video useful do make sure you subscribe and give this video a thumbs up but also make sure you visit our website www.firstreadtutors.com but also do sign up for our edXcel anthology and edXcel igcsc texts course where we go over The Crucible, The Play and how to answer exam questions in lots of detail. Thanks so much for listening.