Darling Wifey and I went to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Crucible at the RST in Stratford last night. Yet another stunning performance of an incredible play – I think? it would be entertaining to? watch the RSC do my gardening, they are so good to watch. (Mind you, I’d? rather watch anyone else? do my gardening than actually do it myself.)

When Miller penned the play, in response to Elia Kazan’s 1952 decision to save his own career by ‘naming names’ to Senator McCarthy’s own witch-hunt, it was with one intention in mind: to caricature one of Calvinism’s? regularly abused qualities? in order to? denounce those who believed that only? people who openly declare their allegiance and denounce dissidents should enjoy the freedoms and blessings our society has to give. (Kazan was still paying the price for his decision when he was given a Lifetime Achievement Ward at the 1999 Oscars,? as so many people refused to applaud him. Meanwhile the Washington Post still regarded him as a hero in the struggle against Communism.)

This? is a natural consequence of any idealism. It is only because of the significance of the Founding Fathers in American history that Miller chose to use the example of the Salem Witch-hunts to attack those who sacrifice freedom and liberty on the altar of their own creeds – but he might just have easily have written a play about the Muslim Rightly Guided Caliphs, or the Gunpowder Plot in Stuart England, or the establishment of the State of Israel. And on Radio 4 the other week, the parallels with the “War on Terror” are equally valid. (Although how can you declare war on an abstract noun?)

One thing that shines through the play is a universal truth about human belief, that we are able to live? the paradox of enjoying the benefits of freedom whilst, without the smallest twinge of our consciences, deny those freedoms to others. After all, if we think that we have found the truth, it is easy to dismiss, denounce and condemn those who we think have not.

After all, if the truth is the truth, then nothing should be allowed to deny it. And, as Deputy-Governor Danforth says, “if they are innocent they have nothing to fear.“