The Crucible A Powerful Theatrical Piece.
The play is set in the town of Salem, in the area that is now east Massachusetts, in the year 1692. At this time the U.S.A, which was then New England, was a sparsely populated place, as the first settlers from the U.K had only begun to arrive some 72 years earlier, in 1620. A great number of these early settlers where puritans, a deeply religious way of life which was based around devout, unquestioning belief, and a disciplined way of life. This, naturally, meant an undoubting belief in the Bible, which had not existed in 1620's England, prompting their departure to settle in the U.S.A.
Purist ways of life dictate that to allow for a greater concentration on the word of the Bible and to avoid sin, you must not engage in sport of any kind. This even extending to not celebrating the important life events of Jesus Christ, as most modern Christians do. Almost in contradiction, but remaining understandable in with basic understanding of the Christian religion, working on a Sunday was looked down upon. While sport was taboo, so where practically all things that in modern life are often seen as enjoyable including the revering of materiel objects. The puritans dressed for and lived a Spartan life, as we can well see in the opening description of Betty Parris? bedroom. Their dress was basic, robes and cloths in only black and white.
Despite their apparently uncomplicated lifestyle and unwavering belief in god, the people of Salem considered themselves to live in danger. They lived on the edge of an unexplored land, surrounded by a place they believed to be filled with evil, possibly even home to the devil. It is the forest, on the towns unexplored outskirts, where the girls first become involved with thewitchcraft?, and this location may have had a part in people's disbelief that they might be doing anything but trafficking with the devil.
At the time the play takes place, around the turn of the 18th Century, a fear is sweeping across the Christian world.
