The Crucible: Act Two Review Sheet
Setting:
1. When does Act 2 occur in relationship to Act 1?
2. Where does Act 2 occur?
Plot: Put the events in the appropriate order.
________Reverend Hale arrives to question the Christian character of the house, revealing that
Elizabeth and Rebecca Nurse have been mentioned in court. Ironically, John Proctor receives his
“third strike” when he falters in reciting the Ten Commandments.
________Mary Warren, the Proctor’s servant and now an official of the court, returns and gives
Elizabeth a poppet she made in court. The situation is Salem is discussed, with 39 now accused,
Goody Osburn set to hang; and Sarah Good confessing to witchcraft.
________Proctor commits to saving his wife, confronting Mary and saying she will go to the
court to tell the truth. Mary Warren admits to being afraid of the wrath of Abigail, as she cowers
and sobs that she cannot do it.
________John and Elizabeth realize that Abigail wants Elizabeth dead, and Elizabeth pleads with
John to go to Abigail and set everything straight.
________Elizabeth denies any wrong doing, and explains that Mary gave her the poppet in
question. Mary is brought in to corroborate her testimony.
________John Proctor forbids Mary from returning to court, and Mary reveals that Elizabeth’s
name has been mentioned in the court.
________Elizabeth and John Proctor discuss his interaction with Abigail in town in Act I, and the audience
realizes that the relationship is tense and tried.
________Proctor tells Hale that Parris found the girls dancing in the woods, and that their antics have nothing
to do with witchcraft.
________Giles Corey and Francis Nurse enter and announce their wives were taken away. Ezekiel Cheever
arrives to question Elizabeth, as she has been charged with attacking Abigail Williams by pushing a needle into
her stomach.
________Cheever prepares to take Elizabeth away by serving her arrest warrant, which Proctor in turn rips up
in anger.
Predict: Support your answer with references to what you have read that has led you to make that prediction.
1. Do you think that Mary Warren will expose Abigail? Why or why not?
2. How do you think Abigail will react when Proctor tells the court that she said the girls were just playing
and were not really bewitched?
3. Do you think the four judges who have come from Boston for the trial, the court magistrates, and the
deputy governor will fall for the girls’ “bewitched” antics?
4. Predict what will happen to:
John Proctor
Elizabeth Proctor
Rebecca Nurse
Abigail Williams
Reverend Hale
QUOTE EXPLANATIONS: The following quotations are from Act Two of The Crucible. Write a response
for each one, discussing its significance. Be sure to include who is speaking, to whom they are speaking, what
events are occurring at the time the passage is spoken and why it is important.
1. “It’s winter in here yet.”
2. “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the
kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law.”
3. “Is the accuser always holy now?”
4. “You forget nothin’ and forgive nothin’. Learn charity, woman…I have not moved from there to there
without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches around your heart…”
5. “I am a good woman I know it; and if you believe I may do only good work in this world, and yet be
secretly bound to satan, then I must tell you sir, I do not believe it…If you think that I am [a witch], then
I say there are none.”
6. “Why, this go hard with her- I had my doubts, I had my doubts but here’s calamity”