Even Mr. Miller himself seems uncertain on this score. In a long commentary which he has inserted in the published text of the first act of the play, he says at one point: ``However, that experience never raised a doubt in his mind as to the reality of the underworld or the existence of Lucifer's many faced lieutenants. And his belief is not to his discredit. Better minds than Hale's were -- and still are -- convinced that there is a society of spirits beyond our ken.'' (page 33) On the other hand, a little later on he says: ``Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon -- such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas. When we see the steady and methodical inculcation into humanity of the idea of man's worthlessness -- until redeemed -- the necessity of the Devil may become evident as a weapon, a weapon designed and used time and time again in every age to whip men into a surrender to a particular church or church-state.''

Apparently he does not intend that those who read or view this play should think of the devil as being actually real. Yet such is the dramatic power of his writing that the audience is nevertheless left in the grip of the terrible power and potency of that which came over Salem. It casts a spell upon them so that they leave with a feeling of having been in the mysterious presence of an evil power. It is not enough in accounting for this feeling to analyze it into the wickedness of individual people added together to produce a cumulative effect. For this does not account for the integral, elemental power of that which grows with abounding vigor as the play unfolds, nor does it explain the strange numinous sense of presentness which comes over those who watch the play like a spell. The reality of spirit emerges in this play in spite of the author's convictions to the contrary.