The story of a community swept up in a maelstrom of backstabbing, suspicion, and dreadful accusations, Miller's play is loosely based on the events of the Salem witch trials in Colonial America. But it's not just a history piece. Writing in the early 1950s, Arthur Miller was responding to McCarthyism and the blacklist, which sent the modern U.S. spasming through an all new, sensational-- though no less terrible--"witch-hunt." It is also a revealing, psychologically intense story of individuals determined to rein-in events before more damage is done.