Written at the height of the cold war “red scare”, Arthur Miller’s 1952 play The Crucible was a retelling of the 17th-century Salem witch trials (1692-93) which soon became the classic parable of mass hysteria.

Miller’s play has long been described as “a cornerstone of American theatre” and “an allegory of our times”. Adapted into a 1996 Oscar-nominated Hollywood film, recent stage revivals on Broadway (2016) and at the UK’s National Theatre (2022) further confirm its enduring popularity.

A staple of the high-school syllabus (a YouTube search yields over 3,200 school productions), the play has also come to shape popular understandings of early modern witchcraft. As Miller (1915-2005) foresaw, its interpretation of Salem became a flexible model applicable to other tragedies – so flexible, in fact, that “witch-hunt” has in recent years devolved into a virtually meaningless political catchphrase.

While acknowledging some artistic licence, Miller still claimed to have captured Salem’s “essential nature”, insisting that “the fate of each character is exactly that of his historical model”. As a work of history, however, The Crucible is deeply flawed; as a morality tale, it can even be described as positively harmful.

The central conflict driving the play – and the witch-hunt – is sparked by the illicit romance between John Proctor, an affluent householder, and his former teenage servant, Abigail Williams. As the witch-hunt unfolds, Abigail – described in the stage instructions as “a strikingly beautiful girl … with an endless capacity for dissembling” – feigns........

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