Crucible
# Betty Parris' mother was not dead, but very much alive at the time. She died in 1696, four years after the events.
# Soon after the legal proceedings began, Betty was shuttled off to live in Salem Town with Stephen Sewall's family. Stephen was the clerk of the Court, brother of Judge Samuel Sewall.
# Stage directions call for a 'rifle' to be used by the inhabitants of Salem, disregarding the fact that rifling would not have been available to them for at least a hundred years.
# The Parris family also included two other children -- an older brother, Thomas (b. 1681), and a younger sister, Susannah (b. 1687) -- not just Betty and her relative Abigail, who was probably born around 1681.
# Abigail Williams is often called Rev. Parris' "niece" but in fact there is no genealogical evidence to prove their familial relationship. She is sometimes in the original texts referred to as his "kinfolk" however.
# Miller admits in the introduction to the play that he boosted Abigail Williams' age to 17 even though the real girl was only 12, but he never mentions that John Proctor was 62 and Elizabeth, 41, was his third wife. He was not a farmer but a tavern keeper. Living with them was their daughter aged 15, their son who was 17, and John's 33-year-old son from his first marriage. Everyone in the family was eventually accused of witchcraft. Elizabeth Proctor was indeed pregnant, during the trial, and did have a temporary stay of execution after convicted, which ultimately spared her life because it extended past the end of the period that the executions took place.
The first two girls to become afflicted were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, not Ruth Putnam, and they had violent, physical fits, not a sleep that they could not wake from.#ver stumbled upon it. Some of the local girls had attempted to divine the occupations of their future husbands with an egg in a glass -- crystal-ball style. Tituba and her husband, John Indian (absent...
View Full Essay