The Theater: The Ethos of Courage

THE CRUCIBLE

by ARTHUR MILLER

The name of every virtue at its apex is courage.

—Winston Churchill

This is Arthur Miller’s play about courage. In quality, it ranks second only to his finest play, Death of a Salesman, a drama concerned with the lack of courage. Both plays stress the cost of personal integrity, the price one pays for having it, and for losing it.

In plot and action The Crucible revolves around the trials for witchcraft in 17th century Salem. When first produced in 1953, it was lauded as an attack on the Communist witch hunts of Joe McCarthy. We can see in retrospect that the play was interpreted in too narrow a political sense. It deals with the universally recurring question of the individual conscience v. tyranny, whether it be the tyranny of the state, of economic or military power, of religion, or of the moment’s public opinion.

Miller’s answer is as strong as it is stark; the currency of conscience has only one backing—a man’s lifeblood. Miller astutely recognizes that the purpose of tyranny is not to scourge the guilty but to crush the free. A tyranny must wipe out its most dangerous enemy—one man who will not save his life by confessing to a lie. Building to a powerful crescendo, The Crucible makes its hero (Robert Foxworth) face just that terrible choice. It is so easy to confess and not have to leave his wife (Martha Henry) a widow, his children fatherless. For a long moment he is tempted, and then he looks into an abyss darker than the loss of his life: the death of his soul.

This is the finest production of a play ever mounted at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. The cast has been infected with the playwright’s ethical fervor, and all its members deserve praise. In addition to Foxworth and Henry, three others win special laurels: Stephen Elliott as a pitiless magistrate, Pamela Payton-Wright as Foxworth’s seductress, and Philip Bosco as a deeply troubled Christian minister.

Nowadays, the young often speak soberly of making “statements” with their lives. They might well learn from Arthur Miller, as from Churchill, that without personal moral courage, all other statements are meaningless. ·T.E.K.

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