One of the major differences between the two plays is the period in which they are set (Pygmalion is set in the early twentieth century, The Crucible in the Seventeenth). The different periods in which the plays are set mean that the characters have different beliefs and traditions in accordance to the times.
The characters in The Crucible are Puritans, Protestants who advocated strict religious discipline and lived in accordance to the Bible, meaning they believe in and fear witchcraft, condemning it as a sin, which is what the play is about. Pygmalion is set in a city which contradicts the stern Victorian ideals of morality; prostitution and underhand dealings abounded. In Eliza we see a confident woman who works for a living, which is in contrast to The Crucible, where the majority of the women are submissive and take on a distinctly inferior role to men.
The style of our performance was very realistic. We ensured the characters all had costume appropriate to the late Victorian era, and included suitable props in our set. The characters all had names and personal histories, thus making it easier for the audience to connect with the characters and empathise with their emotions and individual plights. The Crucible is also a realistic play, based on the true events of the witch trials which took place in the 1690s. Arthur Miller made sure to set the Massachusetts’ town of Salem in context, giving the characters names and jobs in society to help convey realism.
Pygmalion is a comic play, its plot is based on a light hearted affair which rarely lapses into serious matters; sometimes laced with melancholy it does however all end well for Eliza and Mr. Higgins without moral reproach. However; based on the events of the actual Salem witch trials which took place in 1692, The Crucible was written in the 1950s to reflect the grave political and social implications of the McCarthy trials, in which similar witch hunts occurred targeting citizens as communists rather than disciples of Satan. It is a serious drama which will continue to have social and political resonances in any era. The two plays therefore differ greatly in terms of genre.
Miller’s diction is formal and concise; the dialogue of The Crucible has a quality that could not easily be achieved in a naturalistic play of the present time. The characters are given a certain dignity and distance by quaint turns of phrase and peculiarities of grammar. The use of Mister as a form of address and 'Goody' as a title suggests a relationship strangely remote; and such phrases such as 'Cain were an upright man', 'there be no road between', 'I am thirty-three time in court in my life', a dialect used by judge as well as peasant, draw attention to another age and environment than ours. For people whose reading material was confined to the bible, it seems natural that their language should be dense in metaphor. It does not sound inappropriate when Hale says, 'If Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing's left to stop the whole green world from burning', or Proctor, 'I have made a bell of my honour, I have rung the doom of my good name'. This heightened language compliments the symbolic nature of the characters and the deep emotions they try to express. Pygmalion’s characters exhibit different dialects contained within English; Higgins is a professor of phonetics and so displays exemplary grammar and pronunciation, Eliza however initially speaks with a cockney accent in no way reminiscent of the Queen’s English. This is something which Higgins changes along with her manners and carriage. The style of English is Pygmalion is far more modern than that in the Crucible and bears more semblance to the present day’s language.
The character I played in Pygmalion was that of Mrs. Pearce, Mr. Higgins’ housekeeper, a stern but kind woman in her late fifties with a fixed role in the household. She begins with a snobbish view of Eliza, because she is ill-mannered and badly spoken, but relents slightly upon discovering her mother is dead and she has been turned out of her home. She is an acutely proud woman, slightly possessive of Mr. Higgins in a motherly way, and is offended when proved wrong or ignored.
A parallel can be drawn between Mrs. Pearce and the character of Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible. Goody Proctor piously forgives her husband John for his adultery; she is aware of his indiscretions but chooses to put it behind her. This is done with great dignity not unlike the unfaltering stoicism Mrs. Pearce exhibits. They both appear to display religious reservedness and Christian charity, shown by Goody Proctor’s forgiveness of her husband, and by Mrs. Pearce’s softening when becoming aware of Eliza’s family situation along with their general attitudes. Mrs. Pearce is a woman in her late fifties, whereas Elizabeth is a mother of young children, and is aged around thirty or so; there is a wide age gap between the two characters.
In conclusion, The Crucible and Pygmalion are both very realistic plays, but with different genres; the characters exhibit similar repressed morals and attitudes towards women, although The Crucible, owing to the much earlier time period in which it is set, takes these to extremes. Definite similarities are apparent between the character of Mrs Pearce and that of Elizabeth Proctor, despite the two hundred year gap between the conceptions of their characters.
