Parris also brings up rumors that Abigail's former employer, Elizabeth Proctor, believes that Abby is immoral. Abigail and Parris discuss rumors about the girls: when they were dancing one of the girls was naked, and Tituba was screeching gibberish. Abigail says that she will admit to dancing and accept the punishment, but will not admit to witchcraft. Already there are rumors that Betty's illness is due to witchcraft, but Parris tells Abigail that he cannot admit that he found his daughter and niece dancing like heathens in the forest. Betty became ill when her father discovered her dancing in the woods with Abigail, Tituba (the Parris' slave from Barbados) and several other local girls. Parris has sent for Reverend Hale of Beverly, believing his daughter's illness stems from supernatural explanations. Parris lives with his daughter and his seventeen-year old niece, Abigail Williams, an orphan who witnessed her parents' murder by the Indians.

The play begins in the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, whose daughter, Betty, lays ill. The witchcraft trials, as Miller explains in a prose prologue to the play, grew out of the particular moral system of the Puritans, which promoted interference in others' affairs as well as a repressive code of conduct that frowned on any diversion from norms of behavior. The Crucible, a historical play based on events of the Salem witchcraft trials, takes place in a small Puritan village in the colony of Massachusetts in 1692.

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