Ezekiel Cheever Quotes

Now believe me, Proctor, how heavy be the law, all its tonnage I do carry on my back tonight. I have a warrant for your wife…I am given sixteen warrant tonight, sir, and she is one…The court bid me search your house, but I like not to search a house. So will you hand me any poppets that your wife may keep here?

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. Ezekiel Cheever makes his first appearance in this scene, arriving at the Proctor home to serve a warrant for Elizabeth’s arrest. He already has a horse wagon full of prisoners falsely accused of witchcraft, with Elizabeth next on his list of sixteen. Claiming to carrying out his legal duty, he demands that any poppet dolls Elizabeth has be handed over. A poppet doll and Cheever will play an important role in the framing of the blameless Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH: I never kept no poppets, not since I were a girl.
CHEEVER (embarrassed, glancing toward the mantel where sits Mary Warren’s poppet): I spy a poppet, Goody Proctor.
ELIZABETH: Oh! (Going for it): Why, this is Mary’s.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. The clerk of the court at the witch trials Ezekiel Cheever searches the Proctor home for poppets. He discovers one on Elizabeth Proctor’s mantel. He finds a long needle stuck in the doll, left there by Mary Warren who made the doll for Elizabeth earlier that day in court. Elizabeth is arrested for witchcraft because Abigail Williams has claimed that she was stabbed with a needle by Elizabeth’s spirit.

The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner in Reverend Parris’s house tonight, and without word nor warnin’ she falls to the floor. Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. And he goes to save her, and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out. And demandin’ of her how she come to be so stabbed, she testify it were your wife’s familiar spirit pushed it in.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. Abigail launches her diabolical plan to get vengeance on Elizabeth for putting her out on the street. Ezekiel Cheever gives a graphic account of how Abby is stabbed in the belly with a needle while at dinner in Parris’s house. Abby blames Elizabeth Proctor’s spirit for pushing the needle in. Cheever uses a vivid animal simile to describe the horror of the attack, comparing Abby to a struck beast. Of course Abigail is lying, having stabbed herself so she could accuse Elizabeth of witchcraft. Earlier that day in court Abby saw Mary Warren make a poppet doll and stick a needle in it, and the poppet is now in Elizabeth’s house. Abigail seizes the opportunity provided by the poppet to frame Elizabeth.

‘Tis hard proof! I find here a poppet Goody Proctor keeps. I have found it, sir. And in the belly of the poppet a needle’s stuck. I tell you true, Proctor, I never warranted to see such proof of Hell, and I bid you obstruct me not.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. This is but one of many examples of the Salem witch trials court and officials jumping to conclusions of guilt on the flimsiest of evidence. A seemingly innocuous poppet, a gift from Mary Warren to Elizabeth, suddenly takes on a sinister importance. Clerk of the court Ezekiel Cheever declares that the doll found in the Proctor home is "hard proof" of witchcraft. On foot of his discovery and Abigail claiming to have been stabbed by a needle, Elizabeth is arrested. Thus Cheever helps set in motion the persecution of the innocent Elizabeth and plays a key role in what masquerades for justice in Salem.

He plow on Sunday…I think it be evidence, John. I am an official of the court, I cannot keep it.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 2. Here John Proctor’s practice of his Christian faith is called into question. Ezekiel Cheever, the tailor turned clerk of the witch trials court, attempts to undermine Proctor’s credibility. He provides the court with "evidence" that Proctor has been seen plowing his fields on Sunday. The Puritans of Salem don’t tolerate people who disrespect the sabboth in this way. Puritan society demanded that people follow the teachings of the Bible and not work on the sabbath or Lord’s day. This passage is an allusion to God’s Fourth Commandment, from the Book of Exodus: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy."

There be so many cows wanderin’ the highroads, now their masters are in the jails, and much disagreement who they will belong to now. I know Mr. Parris be arguin’ with farmers all yesterday – there is great contention, sir, about the cows. Contention make him weep, sir; it were always a man that weep for contention.

– Arthur Miller

The Crucible, Act 4. The turmoil in the community and breakdown in social order caused by the witch trials is graphically illustrated by Ezekiel Cheever’s comments to the judges about the abandoned cattle. The many cows wandering the town’s roads, their owners in jail, are symbolic of the chaos and hysteria that have destroyed Salem.
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