"The Crucible" - language

The language spoken by the characters in the play is intended to give us the feeling of a society which is different from ours in time and manners. When he was researching the play, Miller was intrigued by the language of the court records and adapted some of the forms and usages for his own dialogue. He does not use the exact form of English that the people of Salem would have recognised as this might prove too difficult for a modern audience to understand. Instead, Miller gives us a flavour of the language spoken in seventeenth-century America.

The Influence of Latin

The English spoken at the time of the events in Salem was heavily influenced by Latin. Most educated people would have used Latin for written communication and many important texts were available only in Latin. In Latin, the verb usually comes at the end of a sentence, e.g. "Up the stairs she climbed". If you find that some of the word order in The Crucible is unusual it is because we have now moved away from this way of constructing sentences.

As Latin had been used by the church in order to keep the Bible from ordinary people, the Puritans of Salem rebelled against the language itself but still spoke in a was that reflected the English of their home counrty. Note that in Act 1, when Reverend Hale wants to drive out the Devil, he chants in Latin.

Miller uses double negatives and inverted sentence structures in his version of this language. John Proctor says, "I never said no such thing", Giles Corey tells Danforth "I will not give you no name". In Act IV, Danforth tells Elizabeth "We come not for your life" when the modern version would be "we do not come for your life".

In his autobiography Timebends, Miller said of the language:

I came to love its feel, like hard burnished wood. Without planning to, I even elaborated a few of the grammatical forms myself, the double negatives especially, which occured in the trial record much less frequently than they would in the play.

Some words are used in a way that we would not use them now. Giles Corey complaining about his wife's reading habits, says, "It discomforst me!", using discomfort as a verb, whereas we would say "It makes me uncomfortable". John Proctor expresses amazement that Mr. Hale would "suspicion" his wife. Modern usage would be "suspect".

Christianity and the Bible

The rhythms and imagery of the language echo that of the King James's version of the Bible of 1611. The Puritans in England, forefathers of the Salem settlers, had requested a new transformation of the Bible as part of their pressures for reform of the Church. It took seven years to complete and had a definite influence on style. This Authorised Version, used by Protestants for 350 years, was loved for the beauty and clarity of its English and would have been familiar to the audiences of the 1950s and still is to many today. It was only replaced by modern versions around 1960.

The forenames of the characters and others mentioned are taken from the Bible, as was the parctice in Christian communities. some of them which are not so commonly used today, such as Ezekiel, Isaac and Susanna are from the Old Testament. Others, like John, Thomas, Martha and Elizabeth, can be found in the New Testament.

A good deal of the language found in The Crucible has its origins in religion. As the Puritans took the Bible literally they would have thought it perfectly normal to use sayings from it in everyday speech. Rev. Hale, when he describes his period of soul-searching before he tries to persuade John Proctor to save his life by confessing, says, "I have gone this three months like our Lord into the wilderness". He is comparing his experience to that of Jesus when, according to St Matthew, he was, "led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil" (Matthew, 4:1). In Act 2, speaking of Abigail, Elizabeth Proctor says, "Where she walkes the crowd will part like the sea for Isreal", which is a reference to the parting of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus when Moses led the Isrealites in their escape from Egypt. When Danforth is asked to delay the executions, he replies, "God have noot empowered me like Joshua to stop this sun from rising", which refers to Joshua, 10.

This is a powerful, dignified way of speaking which helps to create the impression of a different soiety, one which is rural and deeply religious. It is deliberate and simple language, which is appropriate to the period in which the play is set without being too difficult for the modern audience.

Within this form of language some characters are made to be more eloquent than others. It is important that Abigail in an impressive speaker, whereas Mary Warren has to be more timid. It is not that the girls actually spoke like this: it suits Miller's dramatic purpose to have the two girls speak differently from one another.

Language in Context

Arthur Miller uses the rhythms and patterns of speech that would have been heard in Salem at the time of the original trials. You need to remember this when writing about the play. the characters are not speaking old English or even funny English. It is simply that the English that we speak today has changed since the seventeenth century. If you need convincing of this, imagine how our speech might sound to people in four hundred years' time.