The Crucible ACT 2

The Crucible ACT 2

Act 2 of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible delves into the escalating tensions in Salem as John Proctor grapples with the consequences of the witch trials. The act explores themes of guilt, betrayal, and the struggle for integrity amidst mass hysteria. Key characters such as Elizabeth Proctor and Mary Warren reveal the personal stakes involved in the trials, highlighting the conflict between personal morality and societal pressure. This act is crucial for understanding the motivations behind the characters' actions and the unfolding tragedy. Ideal for students studying American literature and the historical context of the Salem witch trials.

Key Points

  • Explores the moral dilemmas faced by John Proctor in Salem's witch trials.
  • Highlights the conflict between personal integrity and societal expectations.
  • Features key characters like Elizabeth Proctor and Mary Warren.
  • Examines themes of guilt, betrayal, and mass hysteria in a Puritan society.
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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.
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PROCTOR: Aye, they must, they must….It is a wonder they do
believe her.
ELIZABETH: I would go to Salem now, John… let you go tonight.
PROCTOR: I‘ll think on it.
ELIZABETH: You cannot keep it, John.
PROCTOR: I know I cannot keep it. I say I will think on it!
ELIZABETH: Good then, let you think on it.
PROCTOR: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told
me, Elizabeth. If the girl‘s a saint now, I think it is not easy to
prove she‘s fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in
a room alone—I have no proof for it.
ELIZABETH: You were alone with her?
PROCTOR: For a moment alone, aye.
ELIZABETH: Why, then, it is not as you told me.
PROCTOR: For a moment, I say. The others come in soon after.
ELIZABETH: Do as you wish, then.
PROCTOR: Woman. I‘ll not have your suspicion any more.
ELIZABETH: Then let you not earn it.
PROCTOR: You doubt me yet?!
ELIZABETH: John, if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt,
would you falter now? I think not.
PROCTOR: Now look you, Elizabeth …
ELIZABETH: I see what I see, John.
PROCTOR: You will not judge me more, Elizabeth. Let you look to
your own improvement before you go to judge your husband
any more. I have forgot Abigail.
ELIZABETH: And I.
PROCTOR: Spare me! You forget nothin' and forgive nothin'.
Learn charity, woman. Still an everlasting funeral marches
around your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every
movement judged for lies …
ELIZABETH: You are not open with me. You saw her with me, you
saw her with a crowd, you said. Now you –
PROCTOR: I'll plead my honesty no more, Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH: John, I am only –
PROCTOR: No more! I should have roared you down when first
you told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I
confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken
you for God that day. But you're not, you're not, and let you
remember it! Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me,
and judge me not.
ELIZABETH: I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart
that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John, only
somewhat bewildered.
PROCTOR: Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer. (enter
Mary) Mary Warren, how dare you go to Salem when I forbid it?
Do you mock me? I‘ll whip you if you dare leave this house
again!
MARY: I am sick, I am sick, Mister Proctor. Pray, pray hurt me
not. My insides are all shuddery; I am in the proceedings all day,
sir.
PROCTOR: And what of these proceedings here?-when will you
proceed to keep this house as you are paid nine pound a year to
do?-and my wife not wholly well?
MARY: I made a gift for you today, Goody Proctor. I had to sit
long hours in a chair, and passed the time with sewing. Here,
this doll. (Gives her a small doll.)
ELIZABETH: Why, thank you, Mary. It‘s a fair poppet.
MARY: We must all love each other now, Goody Proctor.
ELIZABETH: Aye, indeed we must.
PROCTOR: Mary. Is it true there be fourteen women arrested?
MARY: No, sir. There be thirty-nine now….
PROCTOR: What? (Mary sobs.)
ELIZABETH: Why, she‘s weepin‘!
MARY: Goody Osburn…will hang!
PROCTOR: Hang! Hang, y‘say?
MARY: Aye….
PROCTOR: The deputy Governor will permit it?
MARY: He sentenced her. He must-But not Sarah Good. For
Sarah Good confessed, y‘see.
PROCTOR: Confessed! To what?
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MARY: That she – she sometimes makes a compact with Lucifer,
and wrote her name in his black book—with her blood—and
bound herself to torment Christians till God‘s thrown down…
and we all must worship Hell forevermore.
PROCTOR: But…surely you know what a jabberer she is. Did you
tell them that?
MARY: Mister Proctor, in open court she near choked us all to
death.
PROCTOR: How choked you?
MARY: She sent her spirit out.
ELIZABETH: Oh, Mary, Mary, …
MARY: She tried to kill me many times, Goody Proctor!
ELIZABETH: Why, I never heard you mention that before.
MARY: I never knew it before. I never knew anything before.
When she come into the court I say to myself, I must not accuse
this woman, for she sleep in ditches, and so very old and poor…
But then… then she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a
misty coldness climbin‘ up my back, and the skin on my skull
begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot
breathe air; and then… then … I hear a voice, a screamin‘ voice,
and it were my voice… and all at once I remembered everything
she done to me!
PROCTOR: Why?—What did she do to you?
MARY: So many time, Mister Proctor, she come to this very door
beggin‘ bread and a cup of cider—and mark this—whenever I
turned her away empty—she mumbled.
ELIZABETH: Mumbled! She may mumble if she’s hungry.
MARY: But what does she mumble? You must remember, Goody
Proctor—last month—a Monday, I think—she walked away and I
thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you
remember it?
ELIZABETH: Why… I do, think, but…
MARY: And so I told that to Judge Hathorne, and he asks her —
“Goody Osburn,”‖ says he, ― “what curse do you mumble that
this girl must fall sick after turning you away?”‖ And she replies:
“Why, your excellence, no curse at all; I only say my
commandments; I hope I may say my commandments,” says
she!
ELIZABETH: And that‘s an upright answer.
MARY: Aye, but then Judge Hathorne say, ― “Recite for us your
commandments!”‖— and of all the ten she could not say a single
one. She never knew no commandments, and they had her in a
flat lie!
PROCTOR: And so condemned her?
MARY: Why, they must when she condemned herself.
PROCTOR: But the proof, the proof?
MARY: I told you the proof—it‘s hard proof, hard as rock the
judges said.
PROCTOR: You will not go to court again, Mary Warren.
MARY: I must tell you, sir, I will be gone every day now. I am
amazed you do not see what weighty work we do.
PROCTOR: What work you do! It‘s strange work for a Christian
girl to hang old women!
MARY: I am an official of the court, they say, and…
PROCTOR: Official!
MARY: The Devil‘s loose in Salem, Mister Proctor, we must
discover … (PROCTOR: Where’s my whip?) … where he‘s hiding!
ELIZABETH: John! John!
MARY: I saved your wife’s life today! (Silence. Proctor’s whip
comes down.)
ELIZABETH: (Softly.) I am accused?
MARY: Somewhat mentioned.
ELIZABETH: Who accused me?
MARY: I am bound by law; I cannot tell it. I only hope Mister
Proctor will not be so sarcastical no more. Four judges and the
King's deputy sat to dinner with us but an hour ago. I -- I would
have you speak civilly to me from this out.
PROCTOR: Go to bed.
MARY: I‘ll not be ordered to bed no more, Mister Proctor! I am
eighteen and a woman, however single!
PROCTOR: Do you wish to sit up?—then sit up.
MARY: I wish to go to bed!
PROCTOR: Good night, then!
MARY: Good night. (She goes upstairs. He throws whip down.)
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End of Document
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FAQs of The Crucible ACT 2

What are the main themes in Act 2 of The Crucible?
Act 2 of The Crucible primarily explores themes of guilt, betrayal, and the struggle for integrity. John Proctor's internal conflict regarding his past infidelity with Abigail Williams serves as a catalyst for the unfolding drama. The act also highlights the impact of mass hysteria on the community, as innocent people are accused and imprisoned based on unfounded claims. Additionally, the tension between personal morality and societal pressure is a significant theme, as characters navigate their choices in a repressive environment.
How does John Proctor's character develop in Act 2?
In Act 2, John Proctor's character evolves as he confronts the consequences of his actions and the weight of his guilt over his affair with Abigail Williams. He struggles with his sense of honor and the fear of losing his wife, Elizabeth, to the witch trials. Proctor's determination to expose the truth about the trials reflects his growing moral resolve, yet he is also depicted as a flawed individual grappling with his past. This complexity makes him a compelling protagonist as he seeks redemption amidst the chaos.
What role does Elizabeth Proctor play in Act 2?
Elizabeth Proctor serves as a pivotal character in Act 2, representing the moral center of the play. Her relationship with John Proctor highlights the personal stakes involved in the witch trials, as she grapples with feelings of betrayal and fear for her husband's safety. Elizabeth's strength and resolve are evident as she encourages John to confront the truth about Abigail's manipulations. Her character embodies the struggle for integrity in a society consumed by fear and suspicion, making her an essential figure in the narrative.
What events lead to Elizabeth Proctor's arrest in Act 2?
Elizabeth Proctor's arrest in Act 2 is precipitated by Abigail Williams' manipulative actions during the witch trials. Abigail, seeking revenge against Elizabeth for her affair with John Proctor, uses a poppet that Mary Warren, the Proctors' servant, made in court. When a needle is found in the poppet, Abigail claims it was used to harm her, leading to Elizabeth's arrest. This event underscores the themes of deceit and the consequences of unchecked hysteria, illustrating how personal vendettas can lead to tragic outcomes.

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