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 THE SCRIPT
Bringing the Salem Witch Trials to Life -- on Paper
Writer Maria Nation ("A Season for Miracles") spent a year researching the events of the Salem Witch Trials and striving to fully grasp the magnitude and complexity of the era in which they occurred. It was important to Nation to portray a sense of the social and sexual politics and culture of the time. She worked to familiarize herself with the Puritan people and the day-to-day life in their community. Religious mores, a shame-based culture, gender politics, a harsh physical geography, disease outbreaks and Indian attacks all contributed to the culture of fear within this society. Nation believes this "back story" helps to shed some light on how the hysteria and subsequent trials came to be. Nation sees it as significant, as well, that the witch hunts happened during a period in which the colony had no charter. For, in essence, there was no law in the land at the time.
Her research consisted of reading works of various scholars and historians, such as John Demos, Stephen Nissembaum and Paul Boyer, Frances Hill and Bryan Le Beau. She spoke with Larry Gragg, who wrote a biography about Samuel Parris, and met with Frances Hill, who was currently in the process of writing a visitor's guide to the 'Salem Witch Trials' after having written her scholarly works, The Salem Witch Trials Reader and A Delusion of Satan. From Nissenbaum and Boyer's Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England, Nation learned how the power and money shift of certain key families related to the series of accusations, which is seen in the film in the conflict between the Putnam clan and the new money class that was represented by Israel Porter and John Proctor. She also referred to the original Parris sermons, which were published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
"The citizens of the colony happened to be quite litigious," says Nation, referring to the letters to the court, petitions, depositions and resolutions she found during her research. In reading these documents, Nation also got a sense of the formality and cadence of the characters' speech and manners -- and hints about their attitudes and lives. From the sermons and writings of Reverend Parris, Nation understood him to be a very stern man; Sir William Phips, an adventurer who was benighted for finding buried treasure off the island of Haiti, was, per Nation, likely more a liberal and progressive thinker, and, although there was little written about Parris' wife, Elizabeth, there is speculation that she was probably a sickly woman -- as she had so few children and died shortly after the trials.
Though it was vital to bring the key players and historically documented events to life in her script, Nation is leaving some of the more ambiguous circumstances open to interpretation by the viewers. "Why the 'afflicted' girls did what they did is one of the most compelling mysteries," says Nation. "Coming to any kind of conclusion about that in this mini-series would be a disservice to history, but if viewers end up debating why the girls did what they did, then I think I will have done my job." |
