The Crucible | Literary Criticism & Book Review

The Crucible Critical Overview

In its initial production in 1953, The Crucible received a mixed reception from drama critics, with many complaining that, while sturdy in its craftsmanship, the work was too obviously a morality play and lacked the adventurousness and innovation of his previous work. Critic Richard Hayes wrote in the Commonweal. "The Crucible, does not, I confess, seem to me a work of such potential tragic force as the playwright's earlier Death of a Salesman; it is the product of theatrical dexterity and a young man's moral passion, rather than of a fruitful and reverberating imagination. But it has, in a theatre of the small success and the tidy achievement, power, the passionate life?an urgent boldness which does not shrink from the implications of a large and formidable design." George Jean Nathan saw similar aspects of Miller' s work, writing in his 1953 Theatre Arts review: "The Crucible, in sum, is...
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