Then what’s he coming for?
PUTNAM: There be children dyin’ in the village, Mister!
PROCTOR: I seen none dyin’. This society will not be a bag to swing around your head, Mr. Putnam. To Parris: Did you call a meeting before you—?
PUTNAM: I am sick of meetings; cannot the man turn his head without he have a meeting?
PROCTOR: He may turn his head, but not to Hell!
REBECCA: Pray, John, be calm. Pause. He defers to her. Mr. Parris, I think you’d best send Reverend Hale back as soon as he come. This will set us all to arguin’ again in the society, and we thought to have peace this year. I think we ought rely on the doctor now, and good prayer.
MRS. PUTNAM: Rebecca, the doctor’s baffled!
REBECCA: If so he is, then let us go to God for the cause of it. There is prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits. I fear it, I fear it. Let us rather blame ourselves and—
PUTNAM: How may we blame ourselves? I am one of nine sons; the Putnam seed have peopled this province. And yet I have but one child left of eight—and now she shrivels!
REBECCA: I cannot fathom that.
MRS. PUTNAM, with a growing edge of sarcasm: But I must! You think it God’s work you should never lose a child, nor grandchild either, and I bury all but one? There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!
PUTNAM, to Parris : When Reverend Hale comes, you will proceed to look for signs of witchcraft here.
PROCTOR, to Putnam: You cannot command Mr. Parris. We vote by name in this society, not by acreage.
PUTNAM : I never heard you worried so on this society, Mr. Proctor. I do not think I saw you at Sabbath meeting since snow flew.
PROCTOR: I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation. Take it to heart, Mr. Parris. There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.
PARRIS, now aroused: Why, that’s a drastic charge!
REBECCA: It’s somewhat true; there are many that quail to bring their children—
PARRIS: I do not preach for children, Rebecca. It is not the children who are unmindful of their obligations toward this ministry.
REBECCA: Are there really those unmindful?
PARRIS: I should say the better half of Salem village—
PUTNAM: And more than that!
PARRIS: Where is my wood? My contract provides I be supplied with all my firewood. I am waiting since November for a stick, and even in November I had to show my frostbitten hands like some London beggar!
GILES: You are allowed six pound a year to buy your wood, Mr. Parris.
PARRIS: I regard that six pound as part of my salary. I am paid little enough without I spend six pound on firewood.
PROCTOR: Sixty, plus six for firewood—
PARRIS: The salary is sixty-six pound, Mr. Proctor! I am not some preaching farmer with a book under my arm; I am a graduate of Harvard College.
GILES: Aye, and well instructed in arithmetic!
PARRIS: Mr. Corey, you will look far for a man of my kind at sixty pound a year! I am not used to this poverty; I left a thrifty business in the Barbados to serve the Lord. I do not fathom it, why am I persecuted here? I cannot offer one proposition but there be a howling riot of argument. I have often wondered if the Devil be in it somewhere; I cannot understand you people otherwise.
PROCTOR: Mr. Parris, you are the first minister ever did demand the deed to this house—
PARRIS: Man! Don’t a minister deserve a house to live in?
PROCTOR: To live in, yes. But to ask ownership is like you shall own the meeting house itself; the last meeting I were at you spoke so long on deeds and mortgages I thought it were an auction.
PARRIS: I want a mark of confidence, is all! I am your third preacher in seven years. I do not wish to be put out like the cat whenever some majority feels the whim. You people seem not to comprehend that a minister is the Lord’s man in the parish; a minister is not to be so lightly crossed and
PUTNAM: There be children dyin’ in the village, Mister!
PROCTOR: I seen none dyin’. This society will not be a bag to swing around your head, Mr. Putnam. To Parris: Did you call a meeting before you—?
PUTNAM: I am sick of meetings; cannot the man turn his head without he have a meeting?
PROCTOR: He may turn his head, but not to Hell!
REBECCA: Pray, John, be calm. Pause. He defers to her. Mr. Parris, I think you’d best send Reverend Hale back as soon as he come. This will set us all to arguin’ again in the society, and we thought to have peace this year. I think we ought rely on the doctor now, and good prayer.
MRS. PUTNAM: Rebecca, the doctor’s baffled!
REBECCA: If so he is, then let us go to God for the cause of it. There is prodigious danger in the seeking of loose spirits. I fear it, I fear it. Let us rather blame ourselves and—
PUTNAM: How may we blame ourselves? I am one of nine sons; the Putnam seed have peopled this province. And yet I have but one child left of eight—and now she shrivels!
REBECCA: I cannot fathom that.
MRS. PUTNAM, with a growing edge of sarcasm: But I must! You think it God’s work you should never lose a child, nor grandchild either, and I bury all but one? There are wheels within wheels in this village, and fires within fires!
PUTNAM, to Parris : When Reverend Hale comes, you will proceed to look for signs of witchcraft here.
PROCTOR, to Putnam: You cannot command Mr. Parris. We vote by name in this society, not by acreage.
PUTNAM : I never heard you worried so on this society, Mr. Proctor. I do not think I saw you at Sabbath meeting since snow flew.
PROCTOR: I have trouble enough without I come five mile to hear him preach only hellfire and bloody damnation. Take it to heart, Mr. Parris. There are many others who stay away from church these days because you hardly ever mention God any more.
PARRIS, now aroused: Why, that’s a drastic charge!
REBECCA: It’s somewhat true; there are many that quail to bring their children—
PARRIS: I do not preach for children, Rebecca. It is not the children who are unmindful of their obligations toward this ministry.
REBECCA: Are there really those unmindful?
PARRIS: I should say the better half of Salem village—
PUTNAM: And more than that!
PARRIS: Where is my wood? My contract provides I be supplied with all my firewood. I am waiting since November for a stick, and even in November I had to show my frostbitten hands like some London beggar!
GILES: You are allowed six pound a year to buy your wood, Mr. Parris.
PARRIS: I regard that six pound as part of my salary. I am paid little enough without I spend six pound on firewood.
PROCTOR: Sixty, plus six for firewood—
PARRIS: The salary is sixty-six pound, Mr. Proctor! I am not some preaching farmer with a book under my arm; I am a graduate of Harvard College.
GILES: Aye, and well instructed in arithmetic!
PARRIS: Mr. Corey, you will look far for a man of my kind at sixty pound a year! I am not used to this poverty; I left a thrifty business in the Barbados to serve the Lord. I do not fathom it, why am I persecuted here? I cannot offer one proposition but there be a howling riot of argument. I have often wondered if the Devil be in it somewhere; I cannot understand you people otherwise.
PROCTOR: Mr. Parris, you are the first minister ever did demand the deed to this house—
PARRIS: Man! Don’t a minister deserve a house to live in?
PROCTOR: To live in, yes. But to ask ownership is like you shall own the meeting house itself; the last meeting I were at you spoke so long on deeds and mortgages I thought it were an auction.
PARRIS: I want a mark of confidence, is all! I am your third preacher in seven years. I do not wish to be put out like the cat whenever some majority feels the whim. You people seem not to comprehend that a minister is the Lord’s man in the parish; a minister is not to be so lightly crossed and
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