How do I make the impression that I read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible?

It has been quantitatively proven (which is to say, the process involved lab coats and clipboards) that people that are familiar with the Crucible have more sex during their lifetimes than their non-Crucible-knowing counterparts. As if sex wasn’t a big enough incentive, that same study also proved those who are familiar with the Crucible also make twenty percent more annually when compared to the incomes of those who choose not to use the work Arthur Miller as a candle to light their dark, empty lives.

This study also found that people are more willing to believe anything said to them by a man in a lab coat with a clipboard. However, this, although interesting, does not have anything to do with The Crucible.

But I digress. There are two ways to give the impression you’ve read the Crucible:

Actually read it

OR

Have someone who has read it construct a timeline of the events that take place during the play, and study that accordingly.

Although actually reading it may appear to give you a better understanding of the material, one may be surprised how effective the study-the-timeline-because-I-got-places-to-fucking-be method works.

To give a personal example, I have never seen the movie Speed. However, Leon Firestone has, and I had him construct a timeline for me to study. Every time I have been at a swanky party, (and believe you me, this happens so often it might as well be constant as my own breathing) the movie Speed comes into conversation. Maybe the conversation does not directly involve the film Speed (it could very well be a conversation about the work of Sandra Bullock), but I never fail to convince listeners that I have seen the movie. In fact, people usually applaud whenever I’m done talking about Speed.

I have taken the liberty of constructing a very thorough timeline that will, hopefully, plant the seeds for your new social life that will involve a plethora of sex.

Act I

1. Reverend Parris prays for his daughter because she is ill.
2. Abigail shows up and tells Parris that his daughter is sick because she has been dancing.
3. For the next 60 pages, the two characters discuss how dancing is not permitted and is a shameful thing.
4. Tituba, Parris’s slave, comes in and starts dancing. She is scolded.
5. John Proctor shows up and makes sure no one is dancing. At the time of his arrival, no one is but he still gives a long-winded speech about how dancing is definitely not permitted.
   

Act 2

1. Fourteen people get put in prison. This prison, much like the town, does not permit dancing.
2. John Proctor trips on a log and his wife construes his fall as a kind of dance and the town erupts into chaos.
3. Many people yell. About dancing.
   

Act 3

1. Everyone in the entire town is placed in prison on the grounds of conspiring to dance.
2. A twelve year old boy asks why dancing is such a crime.
3. The town is speechless and decides to check the rule book
4. Turns out, everyone was confusing “dancing” with “murder.” Woops!
   

Act 4
DANCE PARTY!