AT the end of the 17th century, Reverend Hale came from afar to the town of Salem, convinced that he would expel evil from the face of the earth. He had been invited by that Massachusetts Bay town to investigate a case of witchcraft: a young girl had fallen unconscious in the woods, and a Black slave from Barbados was accused as the witch spreading heresy and disaster.

Arthur Miller, in his play The Crucible, portrays Reverend Hale as someone wh