We've blocked the meetinghouse scene, and we're going to block the jail/gaol scene this evening.

I'm reading Peter Charles Hoffer's The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History as part of my preparation. Miller's Danforth is a composite of many of the colony officials that were involved with the trials. I think that Miller sees Danforth as a moderate figure who is easily swayed by the more radical factions in the community, and once Danforth has chosen a course he sticks with it to the point of calamity. Hoffer's book is helpful for making it clear exactly how high the stakes are for these Puritan colonists. They are clinging to a state of social order, just barely.

The settlement is under pressure from the Catholic French and their Indian allies in the north. Miller's Abigail Williams says, "I saw Indians smash my dear parents' heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night...."

Just four years before, the Catholic James II is deposed by the English, to be replaced by the Protestant William of Orange and his wife Mary, James's daughter. Massachusetts's charter is revoked in 1684 and the colony is merged with the other New England settlements. A new charter is granted, but some political leaders hope to reestablish the old charter, on the strength of William and Mary's coronation. Hoffer writes, "the politics of the colony [pass] from uncertainty to uproar."

As the investigations in Salem threatened to spiral out of control, Governor William Phips established a special court of oyer and terminer to hear the cases. The court was established under English and colonial law without any means to reconcile their differences. Rules of evidence in these courts were not the hard-and-fast rules we think of today. Hoffer:

Or, as I told Lee as we chatted yesterday, "they were making it up as they went along." Is it any wonder that Miller's Danforth says in the gaol scene, "I will not receive a single plea for pardon or postponement.... Postponement now speaks a floundering on my part...."

posted: 12:45:57 PM  

Microsoft is offering Express Editions of its Visual Studio development environment, targeted to students and hobbyists. The suite is full of limitations (perhaps first among them: you can write applications only for .NET 2.0, not the more widely deployed 1.1), but you can't beat the price: it's a free download until November, 2006.

(Thanks to Lifehacker.)

posted: 12:40:27 PM