1
The Crucible
By Arthur Miller
ACT 2
The common room of Proctor‘s house, eight days later.
At the right is a door opening on the fields outside. A fireplace is
at the left, and behind it a stairway leading upstairs. It is the low,
dark, and rather long living room of the time. As the curtain
rises, the room is empty. From above, Elizabeth is heard softly
singing to the children. Presently the door opens and John
Proctor enters, carrying his gun. He glances about the room as
he comes toward the fireplace, then halts for an instant as he
hears her singing. He continues on to the fireplace, leans the gun
against the wall as he swings a pot out of the fire and smells it.
Then he lifts out the ladle and tastes. He is not quite pleased. He
reaches to a cupboard, takes a pinch of salt, and drops it into the
pot. As he is tasting again, her footsteps are heard on the stair.
He swings the pot into the fireplace and goes to a basin and
washes his hands and face. Elizabeth enters.
ELIZABETH: What keeps you so late, John? It‘s almost dark.
PROCTOR: I were planting far out to the forest edge.
ELIZABETH: Oh, you‘re done then.
PROCTOR: Aye, the farm is seeded. The boys asleep?
ELIZABETH: They will be soon. (Serves him stew .)
PROCTOR: I think we’ll see green fields soon. It’s warm as blood
beneath the clods.
ELIZABETH: Oh, That’s well.
PROCTOR: If the crop is good I’ll buy George Jacob’s heifer. How
would that please you?
ELIZABETH: Aye, it would.
PROCTOR: I mean to please you, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH: … I know it, John.
PROCTOR: On Sunday, let you come with me, and we’ll walk the
farm together. I never see such a load of flowers on the earth.
Massachusetts is a beauty in the spring.
ELIZABETH: Aye, it is.
PROCTOR: I think you’re sad again. Are you?
ELIZABETH: You come so late I thought you‘d gone to Salem this
afternoon.
PROCTOR: Why? I have no business in Salem.
ELIZABETH: You did speak of goin‘, earlier this week.
PROCTOR: I thought better of it, since.
ELIZABETH: Mary Warren‘s there today.
PROCTOR: Why‘d you let her? You heard me forbid her go to
Salem anymore!
ELIZABETH: I couldn’t stop her.
PROCTOR: It is a fault, it is a fault, Elizabeth – you’re the mistress
of the house here, not Mary Warren.
ELIZABETH: She frightened all my strength away.
PROCTOR: How may that mouse frighten you, Elizabeth? You –
ELIZABETH: It is a mouse no more. I forbid her go, and she raises
up her chin like the daughter of a prince, and says to me, ―I
must go to Salem, Goody Proctor, I am an official of the court!‖
PROCTOR: Court! What court?
ELIZABETH: Aye, it is a proper court they have now. They‘ve sent
four judges out of Boston, she says, weighty magistrates of the
General Court, and at the head sits the Deputy Governor of the
Province.
PROCTOR: (Astonished.) Why, she‘s mad.
ELIZABETH: I would to God she were. There be fourteen people
in the jail now, she says. And they‘ll be tried, and the court have
power to hang them too, she says.
PROCTOR: Ah, they‘d never hang them ….
ELIZABETH: The Deputy Governor promise hangin‘ if they‘ll not
confess, John. The town‘s gone wild, I think—she speak of
Abigail and I thought she were a saint, to hear her. Abigail brings
the other girls into the court. Folks are brought before them,
and if they scream and howl and fall to the floor—the person‘s
clapped in the jail for bewitchin‘ them. I think you must go to
Salem, John. You must tell them it is a fraud.
PROCTOR: Aye, it is, it is surely.
ELIZABETH: Let you go to Ezekiel Cheever—he knows you well.
And tell him what Abigail Williams said to you last week in her
uncle‘s house. She said it had naught to do with witchcraft, did
she not?
PROCTOR: Aye, she did, she did.
ELIZABETH: God forbid you keep that from the court, John; I
think they must be told.
