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.But Boyer and Nissenbaum s formidable col-lection is not a direct xerox of original documents.To understand howthe collection was produced, one needs to return to the late 1930s, when34 One: You Seem to Act Witchcraft Roosevelt s Works Progress Administration, a New Deal work relief agency,provided funding for a new, extensive compilation of Salem witchcraftmaterials.Under the supervision of Archie N.Frost, multiple archiveswere searched and the records were transcribed.Forty years later, in 1977,with Boyer and Nissenbaum as editors, these transcriptions were publishedby Da Capo Press.Already, it is clear that the materials with which Iam working are not in any sense original. Despite the subtitle s ambi-tious diction ( verbatim transcripts ), Boyer and Nissenbaum are them-selves aware of the slippage that has occurred between the original eventsand their own published collection.They refer to mis-label[ings], inclu[sions] under the wrong cases, obvious errors, illegible and illit-erate testimony, and mis-readings, mostly perpetrated by the WPA(Papers, 32).Though they claim most of these mistakes have been cor-rected in their version, they admit that a few perhaps remain (Papers,32).3 The question I had to ask myself at the outset was if I should usethe easily accessible Boyer and Nissenbaum collection, if I should use the1938 WPA transcriptions, or if I should spend a year or two assemblingmy own original collection by visiting the multiple archives that Frostvisited so long ago.Though there is something to be said for a dustyarchive, particularly in terms of sensory enjoyment, I am interested in theways that the copied and recopied versions function in the academy andin popular understanding as primary sources. What I hope to suggest isnot that there is no reason to work with original documents, but that thecategory of original is always vexed when it comes to historical scholar-ship.Primary sources seem to become more primary as they are copied,published, disseminated, transcribed in short, as they proliferate intomultiple copies and versions.Because the original transcripts the parchments from the 1690swere themselves copies of previously given and previously recorded testi-mony, and because they were almost always edited copies of oral testimony,any sense of spontaneity or true originality is already lost.Direct tran-scripts of the actual Oyer and Terminer hearings have not survived, andsince stenography did not exist at the time, one can only wonder howreadable direct transcripts would be to us anyway.The Boyer and Nis-senbaum records are mainly not direct recordings as much as they are pre-pared statements to be used during the proceedings and deliberations or35 The Making of Salemrecollections by various participants on how the testimony unfolded.I usethe Boyer and Nissenbaum collection not because it has corrected Frost serrors, but because Boyer and Nissenbaum are the most widely studiedtranscriptions of the trials interesting given the critical distance betweenthe parchment and The Salem Witchcraft Papers.4This emphasis on copies, evident in the methodological choices Ihave made in assembling my primary sources, is precisely what charac-terizes my reading of the trial testimony.Nearly every incident of bewitch-ment that occurs during the trials is preceded by a verbal description ofwhat is about to happen.In some instances, the verbal description func-tions like a prediction: Some of the afflicted cried, there is Procter goingto take up Mrs.Pope s feet. And her feet were immediately taken up (Boyer and Nissenbaum, Papers, 660).The afflicted girls declaration workslike a stage direction, describing what action is to be taken in the scene;then, as if scripted, the action transpires according to the direction: Abi-gail Williams cried out again, there is Goodman Procter going to hurtGoody Bibber; and immediately Goody Bibber fell into a fit (Boyer andNissenbaum, Papers, 660.) Sometimes, as when the girls see demonic birdsflying from beam to beam in the meetinghouse, a directive utterance pro-duces not a physical incarnation of the Devil s presence (such as Mrs.Pope s elevated feet or Goody Bibber s fit), but an afflicted group reactionto the presence.As the birds flutter past, the girls point, look, and scream.The trial transcripts, then, read as a play, not just because of their dra-matic tension or their dialogic form, but because inherent in their verytexts is a scripted quality which writes the drama before it is enacted.Butthere is an interesting distinction between the transcripts and The Cru-cible (to take one play as an example).The transcripts include within theirpages the performance as well as the script.While Arthur Miller pens thewords that the actor playing Abigail must then enact on stage, at a momentremoved from the moment in the script, the transcripts include both thedirective words from an author and the performance by an actor. Thetranscripts are script and performance in one.This relates directly to thequestion of the primary source, suggesting that even if one locates the original document at issue, the Salem events are always already scripted. You seem to act witchcraft before us, says Judge Hathorne to Brid-get Bishop at her examination, by the motion of your body, which seems36 One: You Seem to Act Witchcraft to have influence upon the afflicted (Boyer and Nissenbaum, Papers, 84).This phrase, to act witchcraft appears several times in the transcripts,and I think it worth examining in some detail.The theatrical sense of theterm, which to the Puritans would have suggested a blasphemous ten-dency towards ornamentation, duplicity, and inconstancy,5 highlights theperformative nature of witchcraft s manifestation during testimony.The influence to which Hathorne refers is a parodic display that occursthroughout the trials
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