on of it, in the play.-Arthur Miller, Introduction toArthur Miller's Collected Plays, 1957With John Proctor... Miller goes for something deeper than the one-dimensional "good guy." Proctor is enough a product of his society to think of himself as a sinner for having slept with Abigail Williams; so he carries a burden of guilt before he is charged with having consorted with the devil. When he is finally faced with the choice of death or confession, his guilt as an adulterer becomes confused with his innocence as a witch; one sin against society comes to look like another. The stage is set for another victim-hero, for a John Proctor who is willing to be what men say he is, but at the last minute he chooses to be his own man.-Gerald Weales, Arthur Miller'sShifting Image of Man, 1967The "evil" in the play focuses on Abigail as fountainhead.... Her wickedness... amounts to a shrewd use of the hypocrisy, greed and spite that thrive in her neighbors under the pretext of seeing justice done. Her power arises from her ability to convert her psychic energies and the willful pursuit of her own objectives into a genuine visionary hysteria. At bottom Abby knows that her prophetic fit is self-induced, that the witchcraft she denounces is non-existent; but once the fit is on her, she can produce a convincing performance and induce the same kind of hysteria in the children. Her real diabolism is her misuse of the sacrosanct office of witness to gain her own ends.-Thomas E. Porter,The Long Shadow of the Law, 1969 THE END ...
