The conduct of the majority of men in the Salem courtroom is frightening.
Judge Danforth is inflexible,
obsessed with what he regards as the letter of the law rather than what might be construed as its spirit. He is from a
well-respected legal family, and is so convinced of the rightness of his own position that he is unable to listen to advice or weigh evidence to come to a balanced judgement. It is as if he is caught in what is, to him but to no one else in Salem, a very familiar ritual that he is either unwilling or unable to stop, the action in the courthouse runs away with him and he does nothing to avert catastrophe. During
the final scene in the jail, he finally realizes the terrible repercussions for the state if innocent people are hanged and yet still goes ahead.
Reverend Samuel Parris is also a man obsessed not with finding out the truth, but with punishing people whom he has, in his mind, already condemned. From the outside, there is no mercy evident from the behaviour of this Christian minister, but as an actor, Pip Donaghy
gets into his character and tries to be sympathetic to his plight, which
requires a lot of fine-tuning. Parris experiences a lot of stress as the circumstances get out of hand and more and more people are sent to be hanged.
Only the
Reverend John Hale displays enough spirit and magnanimity to admit to himself that his
previously firmly-held beliefs may not be sufficient in themselves to cope with the situation he discovers in Salem. In the courtroom,
he listens intently to what is going on and in the end
he recognises the truth that others are tragically blind to. Actor Paul Shelley had to struggle with how he portrayed Hale, who is essentially a man of reason but is also influenced by the hysteria around him.