"Witchcraze" by Patricia Causey © 2004 - 2006, All Rights Reserved. -- The History


		The Original Musical "Witchcraze" by Patricia Causey is based on the actual history of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. "Witchcraze" tells the story from the perspective of the residents of Salem Town who were accused of misdeeds by the Puritans of Salem Village (where Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" is set).
		Salem, a bustling port town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was home to merchants and businesses, with ships from Europe docking in its harbor every month. These ships brought government dignitaries on their way to Boston, more and more immigrants, as well as goods, and supplies, plus the latest news, gossip, books, and fashions, from Europe.
		Salem had become a "metropolitan" area, much to the dismay of the Puritans who had founded the town. So the Puritans picked up their belongings and founded Salem Village. They established their agricultural community, jealous of the success and seeming ease with which the merchants and residents of Salem Town lived. This jealously stemmed not only from the financial prosperity of Salem Town residents, but the relative prosperity and freedom of the Salem Town women to own businesses such as inns, taverns, shops, and eateries, as well as own land they either bought or inherited. The independent nature of these women's lives would turn out to be disastrous for many of them.
		The infamous Salem Witch Trials, in the year 1692, began when two teenage Puritan girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, were discovered playing divination games with the house slave, Tituba. The older girl feared her father's reaction to the games because he was the Puritan minister of Salem Village, Rev. Samuel Parris. The girls went into hysterics on the floor. Rev. Parris called in Dr. Griggs to examine the girls, but he found nothing to explain their strange behavior. While modern scholars can only guess the "fits" might have been caused by some type of lead poisoning, Dr. Griggs, for lack of a medically-based diagnosis, pronounced the girls afflicted with Witchcraft.
		When Rev. Parris forced the girls to name who had afflicted them, Betty and Abigail accused three people of attacking them their spectre. A spectre was thought to be the invisible power of another person to leave the body and attack others or perform devilish deeds....In a time when women were the property of their fathers then their husbands, these girls, and their newly hysterical friends, were smart enough to realize they had gained some modicum of power in Puritan society---the men of the town listened to them and charged whomever the "Circle Girls" accused next.
		Wrapped up in the power they held, the Circle Girls accused innocent people in Salem Town of Witchcraft, beginning with Tituba, then an outcast and a beggar- woman. The girls' accusations soon expanded to include middle-aged, well-respected women and businesswomen. Recent scholars have put forth the speculation that since many of the Accused were women land- and/or business-owners or healers who lived alone on the outskirts of town, this lends significant insight to the Puritan girls' jealousy over the Salem Town women's ability to lead lives independent from a male-counterpart such as a father or husband, thus mocking the basic patriarchal foundation of society, government, and religion at the time. The accusations quickly escalated, turning neighbor against neighbor. No one was immune, regardless of social status or age. Old men and women and even a four-year-old child were accused alongside outcasts, businesspeople, a former Salem minister, homemakers, and traditional healers. With each passing day, the Salem Witch Trials became more precarious: you could be accused of witchcraft, if you didn't accuse someone else first. Following an accusation was a degrading examination by "holy witnesses" during which the Accused was stripped and examined for anything that might be labeled "the Devil's mark" (a freckle, a mole, a birthmark, a birth defect). Once a satisfactory blemish was located, the "holy witnesses" dragged the Accused to the town jail to await trial.

		The Trial consisted of the government and religious officials asking the Accused a series of questions. In the colonies, as in Europe, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of the Witches, was the handbook on hunting down, examining, torturing, and questioning accused witches. The most important part of this was the questioning, the point at which the Accused had to explain how and why he or she became a witch, how many times he or she had fornicated with Satan, and how many others he or she had delivered to Satan's ways.
		Each trial ended with a predictable verdict. For fourteen women and five men, the end of their ordeal was found within the hangman's noose. One man was pressed to death, and several more of the Accused died in the dark, rat-infested jail while awaiting their fate. The Salem Witch Trials did not end until Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor, William Phips, declared spectral evidence was no longer allowed in trial testimony...This convenient amendment to the Witch Trial proceedings occurred just after the Governor's wife was accused of Witchcraft via tormenting Salem residents with her spectre. Without the ability to claim invisible apparitions attacked the Afflicted, the accusations quickly subsided, and the prisoners were set free...if they could pay their fees to be released.
		While the Witch Trials of Salem came to an end, the legacy of the trials still haunts Salem in history and in legend. Today, more and more historians are studying the Salem Witch Trials not only for the religious aspect of times, but rather as a study into the discriminatory treatment of women in society, government, and religion within the context of American history.