Arthur Miller''s classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 - ''one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history'' - and the American anti-communist purges led by Senator McCarthy in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of mindless persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.

A depiction of innocent men and women destroyed by malicious rumour, The Crucible is also a powerful indictment of McCarthyism and the ''frontier mentality'' of Cold War America.