Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! 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! In a small tight-knit community, gossip and rumour spread like wildfire, inflaming personal grievances until no-one is safe from accusation and vengeance. The Crucible is Arthur Miller''s classic dramatisation of the witch-hunt and trials that besieged the Puritan community of Salem in 1692. Seen as a chilling parallel to the McCarthyism and repressive culture of fear that gripped America in the 1950s, the play''s timeless relevance and appeal remains as strong as when the play opened on Broadway in 1953.This new edition includes an introduction by Soyica Diggs Colbert, that explores the play''s production history as well as the dramatic, thematic, and academic debates that surround it; a must-have resource for any student exploring The Crucible .>

[The book has] extensive but not daunting information under headings such as Historical and Social Context, Genres and Themes and Performance History, among other aspects. It's clearly and accessibly written.

Autorentext
Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he began work with the Federal Theatre Project. His first Broadway hit was All My Sons, closely followed by Death of a Salesman, The Crucible and A View from the Bridge. His other writing includes Focus, a novel; The Misfits, first published as a short story, then as a cinema novel; In Russia, In the Country, Chinese Encounters (all in collaboration with his wife, photographer Inge Morath) and 'Salesman' in Beijing, non-fiction; and his autobiography, Timebends, published in 1987. Among his other plays are: Incident At Vichy, The Creation of the World and Other Business, The American Clock, The Last Yankee, and Resurrection Blues. His novella, Plain Girl, was published in 1995 and his second collection of short stories, Presence, in 2007. He died in February 2005 aged eighty-nine. Soyica Diggs Colbert is the Idol Family Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts at Georgetown University. She is also an Associate Director at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Colbert is the author of Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics, and The African American Theatrical Body. Colbert co-edited Race and Performance After Repetition and The Psychic Hold of Slavery. Most recently, she served as a Creative Content Producer for The Public Theatre's audio play, *shadow/land.*Susan Abbotson is Professor of English at Rhode Island College, where she mostly teaches drama. She is the author of Student Companion to Arthur Miller (2000) and A Critical Companion to Arthur Miller (2007) and numerous articles on Arthur Miller and other modern and contemporary playwrights. Past President of the Arthur Miller Society, she now manages their website and FaceBook page, and is the Performance Editor for the Arthur Miller Journal. She also authored Thematic Guide to Modern Drama (2003), Masterpieces of Twentieth Century American Drama (2005), and Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1950s (2019). She has published articles on Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, Mae West, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, August Wilson, Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman, and Paula Vogel in a variety of books and journals.

Inhalt
Chronology

Introduction

Historical, Social and Cultural Contexts

Genre and Themes

Play as Performance

Production History

Academic Debate

Behind the scenes - Interview with Set Designer Soutra Gilmore on The Old Vic production of The Crucible, directed by Yaël Farber

Further Study

The Crucible

Notes