Sir William Phips, the Governor of Massachusetts, created a new court to oversee the witchcraft cases. One of the most flamboyant of the women executed was Bridget Bishop, a woman who had been married several times and was known as the mistress of two Salem taverns and had a reputation for dressing more 'artistically' than the women of the village. Although most of the women first accused of witchcraft were considered disreputable, several reputable members of the community were soon executed, including Rebecca Nurse (featured in the play), and in the most controversial execution, George Burroughs, the former minister in Salem. This added to suspicions of witchcraft by Tituba, and led to the slave becoming one of the first women accused, along with Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn. As a form of counter-magic, Tituba was ordered to bake a rye cake with the urine of the afflicted victim and to feed the cake to a dog. The Parris' slave, Tituba (who was likely a South American Arawak Indian and not African), immediately came under suspicion. However, actual events diverge from the narrative of the play. Other girls, including Ruth Putnam and Mercy Lewis also exhibited similar symptoms. Before Betty Parris fell ill, Cotton Mather had published 'Memorable Providences,' describing the suspected witchcraft of an Irish washerwoman in Boston, and Betty Parris' hysteria mirrored those of the suspected Irish witch. As the play describes, the witchcraft trials began because of the illness of Betty Parris, the daughter of the Salem minister, Reverend Samuel Parris, a former merchant in Barbados. Hundreds of other persons faced accusations of witchcraft and dozens more languished in jail without trials. The Salem witch trials took place from June through September of 1692, during which time nineteen men and women were hanged at Gallows Hill near Salem, while another man, Giles Corey, was stoned to death for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges. Yet, is as much a product of the time in which Arthur Miller wrote it - the early 1950s - as it is description of Puritan society. The Crucible is a fictional retelling of events in American history surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century.

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