“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.” 

After married man John Proctor decides to break off his affair with his young lover, Abigail Williams, she leads other local girls in an occult rite to wish death upon his wife, Elizabeth. When the ritual is discovered, the girls are brought to trial. Accusations begin to fly, and a literal witch hunt gets underway. Before long, Elizabeth is suspected of witchcraft, and John's attempt to defend her only makes matters worse. 

The Crucible is a 1953 play by American playwright Arthur Miller. It is a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for McCarthyism, when the United States government persecuted people accused of being communists.