One thing about the language is that it is easy to understand. Miller made it for the audience of today and guessed that if he put most of the play into understandable terms then people will watch it. He made up a dialect that did not belong to any one time, it is a mixture of the time period he wrote it in and the time period he set it in. As I said, it is understandable but it is not the type of language used today. Just to point this out if you look at page fifty-three and go down eleven lines where Proctor says ‘I ― have no knowledge in that line’, many people will understand the meaning but we wouldn’t say it like that more than likely we would say something like ‘I don’t know anything about that.
The tone of the language used is not a positive one there is not ever mentioned a stage direction about someone saying something happily. The words used are more like ‘coldly’, ‘resentfully’, ‘lost’, and so on there are not many if any happy stage directions. The language can sometimes be defensive, argumentative, or attacking. Hale is acting like a teacher that knows one of his pupils has done something wrong. People in the audience will notice the negative atmosphere and will start to dislike Hale a little bit for his presumptuousness and his pompousness towards John. At the beginning, he rakes up all the absence the Proctor family had from the church. He goes over the Ten Commandments, asking if John and Elizabeth knew them. When asked if he knew his commandments he answered ‘I ― am sure I do’ his response showed that he obviously was unsure about whether he remembered it all. This would have been clear not just to Hale but also to the audience. Miller wanted to make it obvious to the audience that John did not trust his memory in this case.
Before Hale enters, there is a big build up of mood and tension between Elizabeth and John. It does not just start when they get onto the subject of John being alone with Abigail it starts as soon as the Act begins when John adds some seasoning to the food he finds in the pot and remarks it is well seasoned he is not telling her that he seasoned it to his liking. The audience will see the irony of this as he is not complimenting her he is complimenting himself but without her realisation of this fact. They engage themselves in small talk, as they know that speaking what is on their minds will only lead to trouble. After Hale enters, they both calm down immediately to save face in front of the Reverend. Proctor is unhappy that the reverend came in to jibe at him for missing the Sunday mass and all the other important ceremonies like the christening of his son. Tension begins to mount between Proctor and Hale because of this. Suspense is built up when Hale asks Proctor to say all of the Ten Commandments. The audience are wondering whether Proctor will or will not recite all of them.
When John makes a start on his recitation, the stage directions say that he begins to sweat. No doubt, Hale would have noticed this and this may lead him to believe that John was not as strong a Christian as the other people believed him to be. When Giles Corey and Francis Nurse enter there is even more tension added to the situation as both of their wives have been taken away on suspicion of witchcraft. Proctor is deeply concerned on two levels: For the safety of Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse; and the welfare of their husbands. Whether his own wife would be taken away like Giles’ and Francis’ wives.
Hale on the other hand is shocked; he cannot believe that Rebecca Nurse had been charged with being a witch and arrested as well. This is probably the point when the audience notice a change in Hale’s mood, before he was pompous with a degree of smugness as well; now he is shocked and I think he has come to his senses regarding the way the girls are wielding their power over the town of Salem. This is the turning point for reverend Hale; this is where he realises the mistake he made by trusting in the girls. It takes a long time for him to show this openly. When Elizabeth is taken away this sets the final nail in Abigail’s coffin as far as John is concerned, she had gone too past his threshold of allowance. He had now resolved to get back at Abigail in any way that he could.
Abigail and her disciples have achieved an extremely unusual level of power and authority for young, unmarried girls in a Puritan community. They can destroy the lives of others with a mere accusation, and even the wealthy and influential are not safe.
Proctor's sense of guilt begins to eat away at him. He knows that he can bring down Abigail and end her reign of terror, but he fears for his good name if his hidden sin of adultery is revealed. The pressing knowledge of his own guilt makes him feel judged, but Elizabeth is correct when she points out that the judge who pursues him so mercilessly is himself. Proctor has a great loathing for hypocrisy, and, here, he judges his own hypocrisy no less harshly than that of others.
Proctor's intense dilemma over whether to expose his own sin to bring down Abigail is complicated by Hale's decision to visit everyone whose name is even remotely associated with the accusations of witchcraft. Hale wants to determine the character of each accused individual by measuring it against Christian standards. His invasion of the home space in the name of God reveals the essential nature of the trials—namely, to root out hidden sins and expose them. Any small deviation from doctrine is reason for suspicion. Proctor tries to prove the upright character of his home by reciting the Ten Commandments. In forgetting to name adultery, however, just as he "forgot" it during his affair with Abigail, he not only exposes the deficiency of his Christian morality but also suggests the possibility that his entire household has succumbed to the evil influence of the devil and witchcraft.
When Proctor asks indignantly, ’is the accuser always holy’, he comments upon the essential attractiveness of taking the side of the accusers. Many of the accusations have come through the ritual confession of guilt—one confesses guilt and then proves one's "innocence" by accusing others. The accusing side enjoys a privileged position of moral virtue from this standpoint. Proctor laments the lack of hard evidence, but, of course (as Danforth will later point out), in supernatural crimes, the standards of evidence are not as hard and fast. The only "proof" is the word of the alleged victims of witchcraft. Thus, to deny these victims' charges is almost a denial of the existence of witchcraft itself—quite a heretical claim. Therefore, those who take the side of the accusers can enjoy the self-justifying mission of doing God's will in rooting out the devil's work, while those who challenge them are threatening the very foundations of Salem society.
Hale, meanwhile, is undergoing an internal crisis. He clearly enjoyed being called to Salem because it made him feel like an expert. His pleasure in the trials comes from his privileged position of authority with respect to defining the guilty and the innocent. However, his surprise at hearing of Rebecca's arrest and the warrant for Elizabeth's arrest reveals that Hale is no longer in control of the proceedings. Power has passed into the hands of others, and as the craze spreads, Hale begins to doubt its essential justice.
The revelation of Reverend Parris’s greed over money and material goods that he, as a priest should have given up any thought of, must of come as another shock to him. John told him about the gold candlesticks, ‘… for twenty week he preach nothing but golden candlesticks’. The golden candlesticks have not been mentioned before in the book but there are other occasions which show his greed.
It also comes as another shock to him to find out that everything Abigail has envisioned was all a façade. John tells him, ‘Mr Parris discovered them sportin’ in the woods. They were startled and took sick’. Hale was obviously deeply shocked, and the audience would notice it too as if you look down the page you’ll see it says:
(His eyes wide): Abigail Williams told you it had naught to do with witchcraft!
If the actor of Hale is a good one, he will show the audience how shocked he is to find out his new piece of information through his facial expression and his tone of voice.
This scene is the turning point in the book this is when John decides to show his fury upon the ‘court of justice’, like an ocean falling upon the rocks is how he will fall upon the court. Hale realises what really is going on in the village of Salem is not witchcraft but Vengeance. John sees how much of a manipulative bitch Abigail can really be. This is the scene where everything takes a nosedive into the pit of Gehenna. Hale summed it up earlier when he said on page 58 ‘If Rebecca Nurse be tainted, then nothing’s left to stop the whole green world from burning.’ Hale’s meaning was that if Rebecca was convicted of being a witch then nothing in the world would stop hell taking over earth.
