Rebecca Nurse - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

See also: Cultural depictions of the Salem witch trials

Rebecca Nurse is a central character in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible as well as many other dramatic treatments of the Salem Witch Trials. The PBS film Three Sovereigns For Sarah features Vanessa Redgrave as one of Rebecca Nurse's sisters, Sarah Cloyce, who, although accused, escaped execution. (However, another of Nurse's sisters, Mary Eastey, was also executed.) The film depicts Nurse and her family members as main characters.

Nurse's trial is also the focus of an episode of the CBS radio program "CBS Is There," which aired on July 28, 1947.

She was portrayed by actress Shirley MacLaine in the 2002 CBS miniseries "Salem Witch Trials". In the 1957 and 1996 film adaptations of Miller's play, she was depicted by Marguerite Coutan-Lambert and Elizabeth Lawrence, respectively.

Rebecca Nurse was also the subject of Lectures on Witchcraft by Charles W. Upham.

She is also mentioned in passing in Robin Cook's novel Acceptable Risk, where a fictional character believes her to be pious and registers surprise when she is seen on her way to her execution.

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