THE CRUCIBLE
PROCTOR: You have all witnessed it—it is enough. You have all witnessed it; what more is needed? No—no I have signed it. You have seen me. It is done! You have no need for this. Damn the village! I confess to God and God has seen my name on this! It is enough! You came to save my soul, did you not? Here—I have confessed myself, it is enough! I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name, God knows how black my sins are! It is enough. You will not use me! I am no Sarah Good or Tituba, I am John Proctor! You will not use me! I have three children—how may I teach them to walk like men in the world and I sold my friends? I blacken all of them when this is nailed to the church the very day they hang for silence! You are the high court, your word is good enough! Tell them I confessed myself, say Proctor broke his knees and wept like a woman, say what you will, but my name cannot… I mean to deny nothing. Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life. Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul, leave me my name!
ABIGAIL: I cannot bear lewd looks no more, John. My spirit's changed entirely. I ought to be given
Godly looks when I suffer for them as I do. Look at my leg. I'm holes all over from their damned
needles and pins. The jab your wife gave me's not healed yet, y'know. And George Jacobs comes again
and again and raps me with his stick - the same spot every night all this week. Looks at the lump I
have.
Oh John, the world's so full of hypocrites! They pray in jail, I'm told they pray in jail! And torture me in
my bed while sacred words are coming from their mouths! It will need God Himself to cleanse this
town properly. If I live, if I am not murdured, I will surely cry out others until the last hypocrite is dead!
But John, you taught me goodness, therefore you are good. It were a fire you walked me through and
all my ignorance was burned away. It were a fire, John, we lay in fire. And from that night no woman
called me wicked any more but I knew my answer. I used to weep for my sins when the wind lifted up
my skirts; and blushed for shame because some old Rebecca called me loose. And then you burned my
ignorance away. As bare as some December tree I saw them all – walking like saints to church, running
to feed the sick, and hypocrites in their hearts! And God gave me strength to call them liars and God
made men listen to me, and by God I will scrub the world clean for the love of Him! John, I will make
you such a wife when the world is white again! You will be amazed to see me every day, a light of
heaven in your house!
Mary Warren:
I never knew it before. I never knew anything before. When she come into the court I say to myself, I must not
accuse this woman, for she sleeps in ditches, and so very old and poor. But then- then she sit there, denying and
denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbin' up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp
around my neck and I cannot breathe air; and then (entranced) I hear a voice, a screamin' voice, and it were my
voice- and all at once I remembered everything she done to me!
(Like one awakened to a marvelous secret insight)
So many times, Mr. Proctor, she come to this very door, beggin' bread and a cup of cider-and mark this: whenever I
turned her away empty, she mumbled. But what does she mumble? You must remember, Goody Proctor. Last
month-a Monday, I think--she walked away, and I thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you
remember it?
And so I told that to Judge Hathorne, and he asks her so. "Sarah Good," says he, "what curse do you mumble that
this girl must fall sick after turning you away?" And then she replies (mimicking an old crone) "Why, your
excellence, no curse at all. I only say my commandments; I hope I may say my commandments," says she! Then
Judge Hathorne say, "Recite for us your commandments!" (Leaning avidly toward them) And of all the ten she
could not say a single one. She never knew no commandments, and they had her in a flat lie!
ABIGAIL:
Now look you. All of you. We danced, And Tituba conjured Ruth Putman’s dead sisters. And that is all.. And mark
this—let either of you breath a word , or the edge of a word about the other things, and I will come on you in the
black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reconing that will shudder you. And you know I can do it, I saw
Indians smash my dear parents heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have see some reddish work done at night,
and I can make you wish you had never see the sun go down!!! Now you….Betty, sit up and stop this!!!
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