DANFORTH: Hang them high over the town! Who weeps for these, weeps for corruption! He sweeps out past them. Herrick starts to lead Rebecca, who almost collapses, but Proctor catches her, and she glances up at him apologetically.
REBECCA: I’ve had no breakfast.
HERRICK: Come, man.
Herrick escorts them out, Hathorne and Cheever behind them. Elizabeth stands staring at the empty doorway.
PARRIS, in deadly fear, to Elizabeth: Go to him, Goody Proctor! There is yet time!
From outside a drumroll strikes the air. Parris is startled. Elizabeth jerks about toward the window.
PARRIS: Go to him! He rushes out the door, as though to hold back his fate. Proctor! Proctor!
Again, a short burst of drums.
HALE: Woman, plead with him! He starts to rush out the door, and then goes back to her. Woman! It is pride, it is vanity. She avoids his eyes, and moves to the window. He drops to his knees. Be his helper! What profit him to bleed? Shall the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his truth? Go to him, take his shame away!
ELIZABETH, supporting herself against collapse, grips the bars of the window, and with a cry: He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him!
The final drumroll crashes, then heightens violently. Hale weeps in frantic prayer, and the new sun is pouring in upon her face, and the drums rattle like bones in the morning air.
THE CURTAIN FALLS.
ECHOES DOWN THE CORRIDOR
Not long after the fever died, Parris was voted from office, walked out on the highroad, and was never heard of again.
The legend has it that Abigail turned up later as a prostitute in Boston.
Twenty years after the last execution, the government awarded compensation to the victims still living, and to the families of the dead. However, it is evident that some people still were unwilling to admit their total guilt, and also that the factionalism was still alive, for some beneficiaries were actually not victims at all, but informers.
Elizabeth Proctor married again, four years after Proctor’s death.
In solemn meeting, the congregation rescinded the excommunications—this in March 1712. But they did so upon orders of the government. The jury, however, wrote a statement praying forgiveness of all who had suffered.
Certain farms which had belonged to the victims were left to ruin, and for more than a century no one would buy them or live on them.
To all intents and purposes, the power of theocracy in Massachusetts was broken.
APPENDIX
ACT TWO, SCENE II
A wood. Night.
Proctor enters with lantern, glowing behind him, then halts, holding lantern raised. Abigail appears with a wrap over her nightgown, her hair down. A moment of questioning silence.
PROCTOR, searching: I must speak with you, Abigail. She does not move, staring at him.
Will you sit?
ABIGAIL: How do you come?
PROCTOR: Friendly.
ABIGAIL, glancing about: I don’t like the woods at night. Pray you, stand closer. He comes closer to her. I knew it must be you. When I heard the pebbles on the window, before I opened up my eyes I knew. Sits on log. I thought you would come a good time sooner.
PROCTOR: I had thought to come many times.
ABIGAIL: Why didn’t you? I am so alone in the world now.
PROCTOR, as a fact, not bitterly: Are you! I’ve heard that people ride a hundred mile to see your face these days.
ABIGAIL: Aye, my face. Can you see my face?
PROCTOR, holds the lantern to her face: Then you’re troubled?
ABIGAIL: Have you come to mock me?
PROCTOR, sets lantern on ground. Sits next to her: No, no, but I hear only that you go to the tavern every night, and play shovelboard with the Deputy Governor, and they give you cider.
ABIGAIL: I have once or twice played the shovelboard. But I have no joy in it.
PROCTOR: This is a surprise, Abby. I’d thought to find you gayer than this. I’m told a troop of boys go step for step with you wherever you walk these days.
ABIGAIL: Aye, they do. But I have only lewd looks from the boys.
PROCTOR: And you like that not?
ABIGAIL: I cannot bear lewd looks no more, John. My spirit’s changed entirely. I ought be given Godly looks when I suffer for them as I do.
PROCTOR: Oh? How do you suffer, Abby?
ABIGAIL, pulls up dress: Why, look at my leg. I’m holes all over from their damned needles and pins. Touching her stomach: The jab your wife gave me’s not healed yet, y’know.
PROCTOR, seeing her madness now: Oh, it isn’t.
ABIGAIL: I think sometimes she pricks it open again while I sleep.
PROCTOR: Ah?
ABIGAIL: And George Jacobs—sliding up her sleeve—he comes again and again and raps me with his stick—the same spot every night all this week. Look at the lump I have.
PROCTOR: Abby—George Jacobs is in the jail all this month.
ABIGAIL: Thank God he is, and bless the day he hangs and lets me sleep in peace again! Oh, John, the world’s so full of hypocrites! Astonished, outraged: They pray in jail! I’m told they all pray in jail!
PROCTOR: They may not pray?
ABIGAIL: And torture me in my bed while sacred words are comin’ from their mouths? Oh, it will need God Himself to cleanse this town properly!
PROCTOR: Abby—you mean to cry out still others?
ABIGAIL: If I live, if I am not murdered, I surely will, until the last hypocrite is dead.
PROCTOR: Then there is no good?
ABIGAIL: Aye, there is one. You are good.
PROCTOR: Am I! How am I good?
ABIGAIL: Why, 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 dare call 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 to listen to me, and by God I will scrub the world clean for the love of Him! Oh, John, I will make you such a wife when the world is white again! She kisses his hand. You will be amazed to see me every day, a light of heaven in your house, a— He rises, backs away, amazed. Why are you cold?
PROCTOR: My wife goes to trial in the morning, Abigail.
ABIGAIL, distantly: Your wife?
PROCTOR: Surely you knew of it?
ABIGAIL: I do remember it now. How—how— Is she well?
PROCTOR: As well as she may be, thirty-six days in that place.
ABIGAIL: You said you came friendly.
PROCTOR: She will not be condemned, Abby.
ABIGAIL: You brought me from my bed to speak of her?
PROCTOR: I come to tell you, Abby, what I will do tomorrow in the court. I would not take you by surprise, but give you all good time to think on what to do to save yourself.
ABIGAIL: Save myself!
PROCTOR: If you do not free my wife tomorrow, I am set and bound to ruin you, Abby.
ABIGAIL, her voice small—astonished: How—ruin me?
PROCTOR: I have rocky proof in documents that you knew that poppet were none of my wife’s; and that you yourself bade Mary Warren stab that needle into it.
ABIGAIL—a wildness stirs in her, a child is standing here who is unutterably frustrated, denied her wish, but she is still grasping for her wits: I bade Mary Warren—?
PROCTOR: You know what you do, you are not so mad!
ABIGAIL: Oh, hypocrites! Have you won him, too? John, why do you let them send you?
PROCTOR:
I warn you, Abby!
ABIGAIL: They send you! They steal your honesty and—
PROCTOR: I have found my honesty!
ABIGAIL: No, this is your wife pleading, your sniveling, envious wife! This is Rebecca’s voice, Martha Corey’s voice. You were no hypocrite!
PROCTOR: I will prove you for the fraud you are!
ABIGAIL: And if they ask you why Abigail would ever do so murderous a deed, what will you tell them?
PROCTOR: I will tell them why.
ABIGAIL: What will you tell? You will confess to fornication? In the court?
PROCTOR: If you will have it so, so I will tell it! She utters a disbelieving laugh. I say I will! She laughs louder, now with more assurance he will never do it. He shakes her roughly. If you can still hear, hear this! Can you hear! She is trembling, staring up at him as though he were out of his mind. You will tell the court you are blind to spirits; you cannot see them any more, and you will never cry witchery again, or I will make you famous for the whore you are!
ABIGAIL, grabs him: Never in this world! I know you, John—you are this moment singing secret hallelujahs that your wife will hang!
PROCTOR, throws her down: You mad, you murderous bitch!
ABIGAIL: Oh, how hard it is when pretense falls! But it falls, it falls! She wraps herself up as though to go. You have done your duty by her. I hope it is your last hypocrisy. I pray you will come again with sweeter news for me. I know you will—now that your duty’s done. Good night, John. She is backing away, raising her hand in farewell. Fear naught. I will save you tomorrow. As she turns and goes: From yourself I will save you. She is gone. Proctor is left alone, amazed, in terror. He takes up his lantern and slowly exits.
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
A PLAY IN TWO ACTS
1955
Characters
LOUIS
MIKE
ALFIERI
EDDIE
CATHERINE
BEATRICE
TONY
MARCO
RODOLPHO
FIRST IMMIGRATION OFFICER
SECOND IMMIGRATION OFFICER
MR. LIPARI
MRS. LIPARI
TWO “SUBMARINES”
NEIGHBORS
ACT ONE
The street and house front of a tenement building. The front is skeletal entirely. The main acting area is the living room–dining room of Eddie’s apartment. It is a worker’s flat, clean, sparse, homely. There is a rocker down front; a round dining table at center, with chairs; and a portable phonograph.
At back are a bedroom door and an opening to the kitchen; none of these interiors are seen.
At the right, forestage, a desk. This is Mr. Alfieri’s law office.
There is also a telephone booth. This is not used until the last scenes, so it may be covered or left in view.
A stairway leads up to the apartment, and then farther up to the next story, which is not seen.
Ramps, representing the street, run upstage and off to right and left.
As the curtain rises, Louis and Mike, longshoremen, are pitching coins against the building at left.
A distant foghorn blows.
Enter Alfieri, a lawyer in his fifties turning gray; he is portly, good-humored, and thoughtful. The two pitchers nod to him as he passes. He crosses the stage to his desk, removes his hat, runs his fingers through his hair, and grinning, speaks to the audience.
ALFIERI: You wouldn’t have known it, but something amusing has just happened. You see how uneasily they nod to me? That’s because I am a lawyer. In this neighborhood to meet a lawyer or a priest on the street is unlucky. We’re only thought of in connection with disasters, and they’d rather not get too close.
I often think that behind that suspicious little nod of theirs lie three thousand years of distrust. A lawyer means the law, and in Sicily, from where their fathers came, the law has not been a friendly idea since the Greeks were beaten.
I am inclined to notice the ruins in things, perhaps because I was born in Italy. . . . I only came here when I was twenty-five. In those days, Al Capone, the greatest Carthaginian of all, was learning his trade on these pavements, and Frankie Yale himself was cut precisely in half by a machine gun on the corner of Union Street, two blocks away. Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men. Justice is very important here.
But this is Red Hook, not Sicily. This is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge. This is the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world. And now we are quite civilized, quite American. Now we settle for half, and I like it better. I no longer keep a pistol in my filing cabinet.
And my practice is entirely unromantic.
My wife has warned me, so have my friends; they tell me the people in this neighborhood lack elegance, glamour. After all, who have I dealt with in my life? Longshoremen and their wives, and fathers and grandfathers, compensation cases, evictions, family squabbles—the petty troubles of the poor—and yet . . . every few years there is still a case, and as the parties tell me what the trouble is, the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea, the dust in this air is blown away and the thought comes that in some Caesar’s year, in Calabria perhaps or on the cliff at Syracuse, another lawyer, quite differently dressed, heard the same complaint and sat there as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course.
Eddie has appeared and has been pitching coins with the men and is highlighted among them. He is forty—a husky, slightly overweight longshoreman.
This one’s name was Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman working the docks from Brooklyn Bridge to the breakwater where the open sea begins.
Alfieri walks into darkness.
EDDIE, moving up steps into doorway: Well, I’ll see ya, fellas.
Catherine enters from kitchen, crosses down to window, looks out.
LOUIS: You workin’ tomorrow?
EDDIE: Yeah, there’s another day yet on that ship. See ya, Louis.
Eddie goes into the house, as light rises in the apartment.
Catherine is waving to Louis from the window and turns to him.
CATHERINE: Hi, Eddie!
Eddie is pleased and therefore shy about it; he hangs up his cap and jacket.
EDDIE: Where you goin’ all dressed up?
CATHERINE, running her hands over her skirt: I just got it. You like it?
EDDIE: Yeah, it’s nice. And what happened to your hair?
CATHERINE: You like it? I fixed it different. Calling to kitchen: He’s here, B.!
EDDIE: Beautiful. Turn around, lemme see in the back. She turns for him. Oh, if your mother was alive to see you now! She wouldn’t believe it.
CATHERINE: You like it, huh?
EDDIE: You look like one of them girls that went to college. Where you goin’?
CATHERINE, taking his arm: Wait’ll B. comes in, I’ll tell you something. Here, sit down. She is walking him to the armchair. Calling offstage: Hurry up, will you, B.?
EDDIE, sitting: What’s goin’ on?
CATHERINE: I’ll get you a beer, all right?
EDDIE: Well, tell me what happened. Come over here, talk to me.
CATHERINE: I want to wait till B. comes in. She sits on her heels beside him. Guess how much we paid for the skirt.
EDDIE: I think it’s too short, ain’t it?
CATHERINE, standing: No! Not when I stand up.
EDDIE: Yeah, but you gotta sit down sometimes.
CATHERINE: Eddie, it’s the style now. She walks to show him. I mean, if you see me walkin’ down the street—
EDDIE: Listen, you been givin’ me the willies the way you walk down the street, I mean it.
CATHERINE: Why?
EDDIE: Catherine, I don’t want to be a pest, but I’m tellin’ you you’re wa
lkin’ wavy.
CATHERINE: I’m walkin’ wavy?
EDDIE: Now don’t aggravate me, Katie, you are walkin’ wavy! I don’t like the looks they’re givin’ you in the candy store. And with them new high heels on the sidewalk—clack, clack, clack. The heads are turnin’ like windmills.
CATHERINE: But those guys look at all the girls, you know that.
EDDIE: You ain’t “all the girls.”
CATHERINE, almost in tears because he disapproves: What do you want me to do? You want me to—
EDDIE: Now don’t get mad, kid.
CATHERINE: Well, I don’t know what you want from me.
EDDIE: Katie, I promised your mother on her deathbed. I’m responsible for you. You’re a baby, you don’t understand these things. I mean like when you stand here by the window, wavin’ outside.
CATHERINE: I was wavin’ to Louis!
EDDIE: Listen, I could tell you things about Louis which you wouldn’t wave to him no more.
CATHERINE, trying to joke him out of his warning: Eddie, I wish there was one guy you couldn’t tell me things about!
EDDIE: Catherine, do me a favor, will you? You’re gettin’ to be a big girl now, you gotta keep yourself more, you can’t be so friendly, kid. Calls: Hey, B., what’re you doin’ in there? To Catherine: Get her in here, will you? I got news for her.
CATHERINE, starting out: What?
EDDIE: Her cousins landed.
CATHERINE, clapping her hands together: No! She turns instantly and starts for the kitchen. B.! Your cousins!
Beatrice enters, wiping her hands with a towel.
BEATRICE, in the face of Catherine’s shout: What?
CATHERINE: Your cousins got in!
BEATRICE, astounded, turns to Eddie: What are you talkin’ about? Where?
EDDIE: I was just knockin’ off work before and Tony Bereli come over to me; he says the ship is in the North River.
BEATRICE—her hands are clasped at her breast; she seems half in fear, half in unutterable joy: They’re all right?
EDDIE: He didn’t see them yet, they’re still on board. But as soon as they get off he’ll meet them. He figures about ten o’clock they’ll be here.
The Penguin Arthur Miller Page 49