Historical Accuracy
In creating a work for the stage, Miller made no attempt to represent the real, historical people on whom his characters are based: he developed them to meet the needs of the play. The surviving records offer little evidence about their personalities on which a playwright might draw. Miller fused several people into one character: for example, the judges "Hathorne" and "Danforth" are representative of several judges in the case and the number of young girls involved was similarly reduced. Abigail's age was increased from 11 to 17 to allow a relationship with Proctor, for which there is no historical evidence. However, most of the historical roles are accurately represented, and the judicial sentences pronounced on the characters are mostly the same as those given to their real-life counterparts.
The action of the play takes place seventy years after the community arrived as settlers from Britain. The people on whom the characters are based would have retained strong regional dialects from their home country. Miller gave all his characters the same colloquialisms, such as "Goody" for good wife, and drew on the rhythms and speech patterns of the King James Bible to achieve the effect of historical perspective he wanted.
Read more about this topic: The Crucible
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or accuracy:
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)
“As for farming, I am convinced that my genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)