Salem in 1692 was in turmoil. The Royal Charter had been revoked. Original land titles had been cancelled and others not yet secured. Neighbour accordingly looked on neighbour with some suspicion for fear their land might be reassigned. It was also a community riven with schisms which centred on the person of the Reverend Parris, whose materialism and self-concern was more than many could stomach, including a landowner and innkeeper called John Proctor.

As Miller observed in his notebook: ‘It is Shakespearean. Parties and counter-parties. There must be a counter-party. Proctor and others.’ John Proctor quickly emerged as the centre of the story Miller wished to tell, though not of the trials where he was one among many. But to Miller, as he wrote in the notebook: ‘It has got to be basically Proctor's story. The important thing – the process whereby a man, feeling guilt for A, sees himself as guilty of B and thus belies himself – accommodates his credo to believe in what he knows is not true.’ Before this could become a tragedy for the community it had to be a tragedy for an individual: ‘A difficulty. This hanging must be “tragic” – i.e. must [be] result of an opportunity not grasped when it should have been, due to “flaw.”’

That flaw, as so often in Miller's work, was to be sexual, not least because there seemed a sexual flavour to the language of those who confessed to possession by the Devil and who were accused of dancing naked, in a community in which both dancing and nakedness were themselves seen as signs of corruption.