tragedy, will be at no loss to understand. Mr. Murdoch is labouring to a purpose and with the author. The play is a beautiful example of development, All is elaborately wrought out, the details are numerous, and the result simplicity.
The plot is simply this. A proud woman of great independence and superior education, retires, when age and trouble have begun to set their marks upon her, to the comparative solitude of Salem. She bore trouble in her heart, was among the townspeople, but not of them, loved lonely walks on the hill side, gathered old Indian relics, which she kept out of reverence for the past. “The fee grief due to her single breast” was remorse for an act of pride, by which her husband had fallen in a duel. A word from her might have prevented the calamity, and she had not spoken it.
With such elements, and the material the meddlesome town naturally afforded, and the vile poison of witchcraft already introduced into the land, how easily was this woman implicated. She walked alone and talked much with herself—it was a trick of witchcraft. She possessed little Indian figures, which she called after the names of the local characters of the town—the magistrates and constables, whose religion was to be set at work either through fear or the insult—these were the instruments of incantation, like the waxen images of ancient necromancy. She laughed at the folly of her persecutors—it was of course hardened wickedness. The atmosphere is so choking, that the son yields and for a moment believes his mother’s guilt, but when he listens to her explanation of the silent grief, the lonely walks, he spurns the whole brood in language and acts of unmeasured indignation. This is the triumph of the actor, as well as of the moral element in the fifth act. But evil men have had their counsel and completed their deed. The Witch is condemned to die!
“Gideon. The deed is done! Ruin upon a sacred head
“Is piled, and ye are evermore accursed—
“What have ye done—thou sepulchre of all belief
“(To Deacon Gidney.)
“And truth, stares not this lie you have enacted
“Stark and o’erwhelming as a dead man’s face
“Against your path! What have ye proven
“To drive this penalty against a venerable breast?
“Some solitary walks, sacred as night,
“Familiar love for hills and woods and fields,
“A way through life out of your beaten path
“But ever in the road to the pure Truth
“And goodness of a heart troubled too much
“In conscience for a deed that would have been
“A feather’s weight upon your brutish souls.
“ (To the People.)
“Ye are the most accursed deceivers,
“Most pitiful deluded men, this clime
“Or century hath hatched. Ye have enfogged,
“Darkened, and led astray my childish love,
“Made this aged mother seem a horror and a hag
“To one, who, drop by drop, would once have died—and will—
“To save or serve her! Blasted this blest place
“And made its men and women beasts of prey,
“Hunting each other to chains and flames and deaths.”
This passage tells much of the story. There are other incidents and personages. The Deacon is strongly marked, so is that feeble little shadow of him and the justice, petty officer Pudeater. The Deacon is described
