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ponch22's review
4.0
This took way longer than it should have—the end of the year was just so busy with the holidays, Christmas movie watching, 2021 end-of-year movie watching, sickness (not THE sickness) running through the entire family, etc.
I watched the Daniel Day-Lewis movie on the recommendation of a podcast I listen to, and I felt bad having never read Arthur Miller's The Crucible (especially as a theatre major), so I decided to borrow this from my library to read after the film.
The actual edition I read had some interesting commentary in Act One about the people Miller was writing about. I never knew the play was so well-researched and somewhat historically accurate (as accurate as something can be 250 years after the fact). I just always thought it used the Salem Witch Trials as a McCarthy allegory, not that these were the actual people accused & accusing one another of witchcraft.
The play is good, but I think Miller improved upon the script in writing the screenplay for the film. I obviously was affected, imagining Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Joan Allen, and others as I read the play and some of the scenes that are just dialogue on the page work much better visually on screen (i.e., the girls dancing in the woods or the eventual fate of the Giles Corey).
Still, this feels like an important piece of theatre and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. I didn't read the second half of this book (the "Criticism") because it's a new year and I have so many more books on my TBR pile!
I watched the Daniel Day-Lewis movie on the recommendation of a podcast I listen to, and I felt bad having never read Arthur Miller's The Crucible (especially as a theatre major), so I decided to borrow this from my library to read after the film.
The actual edition I read had some interesting commentary in Act One about the people Miller was writing about. I never knew the play was so well-researched and somewhat historically accurate (as accurate as something can be 250 years after the fact). I just always thought it used the Salem Witch Trials as a McCarthy allegory, not that these were the actual people accused & accusing one another of witchcraft.
The play is good, but I think Miller improved upon the script in writing the screenplay for the film. I obviously was affected, imagining Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder, Joan Allen, and others as I read the play and some of the scenes that are just dialogue on the page work much better visually on screen (i.e., the girls dancing in the woods or the eventual fate of the Giles Corey).
Still, this feels like an important piece of theatre and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. I didn't read the second half of this book (the "Criticism") because it's a new year and I have so many more books on my TBR pile!
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