Laying down the law
The Crucible, the law, and why Sodom and Gomorrah ain't what they used to be
Image: Google Images
When I was about 15 I played Judge John Danforth in our school production of Arthur Miller’s 1953 play The Crucible.
Danforth was a self-righteous, superior man, and I loved every minute of playing him, mainly because it gave voice to my dark urge to punish those who failed to do exactly as I decreed, which happened to be almost everyone.
Alright then, it was everyone.
After the first show, as parents and teachers mingled with the cast searching for nice things to say about the performance, my dad announced to the director that casting me as a judge was most apt, as I already had a habit of laying down the law at home.
Naturally I bristled at his effrontery and secretly sentenced him to unremitting torture until he recanted. The older me now stands in awe of his perceptiveness, damn him.
Cambridge Dictionary explains “laying down the law” as telling people what they must do, without caring about their opinions.
I repeat: damn him.
The word law derives from the Old Norse lag, “something laid down, that which is fixed or set”. So anyone who lays down the law is, etymologically speaking, laying down that which is laid down, which you could argue doesn’t make sense.
Take that, Dad!
Before the Norse had lag, the Romans had lex – which looks like it might be connected. In fact, their word for law came from the verb lego, “to gather, take off, look through, read”. (Not, as you might think, “to build things with interlocking plastic blocks”.)
A critical aspect of the Roman Empire’s success was its vast bureaucracy, administered by functionaries in each land who were familiar with the legislation from which they drew their authority. Their laws were written, gathered together, and demanding of repeated reading.
By the time Old Norse arose in the seventh century, the Roman Empire was two centuries gone. In its absence, the sense of law began to shift from something written to a set of unwritten but agreed upon rules or customs.
You can still hear that distinction today in the phrase common law, which Oxford Dictionary describes as “the part of English law that is derived from custom and judicial precedent rather than statutes”. While Parliament or its equivalent may pass statutes, that’s not the end of the matter. Judges in courts throughout the land have a big say in how those statutes are applied, and what they say can change over time.
With the Enlightenment, the meaning of law expanded to include natural phenomena. Where plagues and floods had been seen as a judgement from on high, and therefore unpredictable (even God has mood swings, apparently), they now began to be regarded as the result of natural processes that had nothing to do with who was fornicating with whom or in what manner.
That said, just what constitutes a law of nature is much debated among science philosophers.
Suppose I claim that everyone reading this is wearing shoes. Suppose we check and the claim proves true. That would surely not be a law, but a coincidence.
What about Einstein’s claim that no signal travels faster than light? Every time we’ve checked, that’s also been borne out. But we don’t regard that as a coincidence; we regard it as a law of nature.
How come? (That’s a rhetorical question. I’ve looked into it and trust me, the answer is long, complex and certain to ruin what could otherwise be a perfectly good day.)
Some philosophers go so far as to state that natural laws are a myth. The best we can do, they say, is make generalisations.
There’s more. Among the scientists who do believe in physical laws, not all agree that they are immutable. American theoretical physicist Lee Smolin argues for the possibility that they must change over time. Trying to state his reasons for this would only put me in deeper over my head than I already am, so I’ll settle for pointing out that in 2008 Foreign Policy Magazine put him at #21 on its list of Top 100 Public Intellectuals. And that’s just one of his many plaudits.
Anyway, enough physics and common law versus uncommon law.
The Crucible played a part in shaping my own worldview and helped turn me into the tree hugging liberal that I am today – though with a decent dose of age-related right-leaning crustiness thrown in. Which probably makes me a wishy-washy, indecisive middle-of-the roader.
Still, there’s no law against that, is there?
Bits and specious
In 1996, just before the movie version of The Crucible was released, Arthur Miller penned a sobering article on why he wrote it. In his words, “the play seems to present the same primeval structure of human sacrifice to the furies of fanaticism and paranoia that goes on repeating itself forever as though imbedded in the brain of social man.”
In 1988 REM released a wonderful album, Document, which contained a wonderful song, Exhuming McCarthy. The subject of the song, US Senator Joseph McCarthy, was a cynical opportunist who helped create, and then rode, a wave of anti-communist paranoia in 1950s America. The Crucible was Miller’s response to that wave. And Exhuming McCarthy is further proof (as if that was needed) of REM’s greatness.
In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language - a couple of centuries of Viking raids and their extracurricular activities will do that. Consequently, many of today’s most common English words come from Old Norse, such as give, take, get, both, husband, sister, call, flat and ugly. Any word beginning with sk or sc also has a fair chance of being of Old Norse origin.
Here’s the best song ever about fighting the law and you know it.
Quote of the week
Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce
Ask me
Got a language-related question? A pet peeve? I’m all ears! Email me at ken.grace@departmentofwriting.co.nz or post a comment below.