recognizes that Abigail is attempting to have John Proctor to herself. In act three, Abigail lies by denying that she had an affair with John Proctor and pretends that Mary Warren's spirit is about to attack her. Overall, Abigail Williams tells numerous lies, which have serious implications and result in the tragic deaths of innocent civilians.

Abigail first lies to her uncle, Reverend Parris, in Act One, when she tells him that she and the other girls "never conjured spirits."  Mrs. Putnam soon after tells him that she sent her daughter, Ruth Putnam, to Parris's slave, Tituba, to conjure the spirits of Mrs. Putnam's dead babies to find out who murdered them.  In other words, they were absolutely conjuring spirits in the woods before Betty Parris became ill.

She lies again in Act One when she insists, "There be no blush about my name."  Parris has confronted her with the rumor that Elizabeth Proctor will not sit near something "so soiled" in church, but Abigail insists that she has an untarnished reputation.  She knows very well that her affair with the married John Proctor would absolutely blacken her name in the village.

Abigail lies again, just a short time later, when she tells Betty, "I told [your father] everything; he knows now [...]."  Betty is frantic and yells back that Abigail didn't admit to drinking blood and working a charm to kill Elizabeth Proctor; in other words, Abby tries to lie to Betty about confessing the whole truth to Parris, and Betty knows that she has not.

Honestly, the list goes on and on.  She lies when she says that Tituba is a witch, when she claims that she herself has been with the Devil, when she accuses other women of being witches, when she testifies against Elizabeth Proctor and Mary Warren, and on and on. 

Abigail Williams is depicted as a cruel, manipulative girl, who lies about witnessing innocent citizens collude with the devil in order to avoid being punished for dancing in the woods and attain a revered position in society. In act one, the adults leave Betty's room and Abigail illustrates her aggressive, cruel nature by threatening the other girls. Abigail tells them,

Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down! (Miller, 21)

The other girls fear Abigail and recognize that she is capable of harming them if they do not corroborate her story. Later in the first act, Abigail deflects attention towards Tituba and uses her as a scapegoat. In order to avoid being punished for dancing in the woods, Abigail reveals that she is a dishonest, manipulative person by saying,

I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him; I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil! (Miller, 52)

After Abigail Williams begins accusing innocent citizens of being involved in witchcraft, she ascends to a high position among Salem's court officials and becomes a revered member of the community. Abigail continues to lie about innocent citizens participating in witchcraft and eventually accuses Elizabeth Proctor of attempted murder. Abigail Williams is motivated to get rid of Elizabeth in order to be with her former lover, John. When Cheever visits John Proctor's home with a warrant for Elizabeth's arrest, he discovers a poppet and says,

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. (Miller, 78)

Abigail Williams's dishonesty and duplicity is illustrated by her willingness to stab herself with a needle in order to make it look like Elizabeth’s spirit attempted to kill her. Tragically, the court officials and the majority of the town believe Abigail Williams, and numerous innocent citizens are hanged during the witch trials.

There are literally dozens of examples of Abigail Williams's lying, cruel nature in the play, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about her. Lying and cruelty are practically hard-wired into her DNA. Like the pathological liar she is, Abigail lies without a moment's hesitation; it's almost like second nature to her.

Numerous examples of Abby's shameless lying abound, but here's just one of them from act one. When her uncle, the Reverend Parris, confronts her about the rumor that Elizabeth Proctor refuses to sit near Abby in church, as she is "soiled," Abby responds by insisting that her reputation is untarnished, or as she puts it, "There be no blush about my name." (And yes, she does say that with a straight face).

This is about as bare-faced a lie as it's possible to get. Far from being untarnished, Abby's reputation is soiled on account of her illicit affair with John Proctor. Of course, Abby's not about to come right out and admit to her uncle that she's been fooling around with a married man, but it's an indication of just how good a liar she is that she can say such unmitigated nonsense with a straight face and be believed.

As for examples of Abby's cruelty, there are more than enough to last us until Doomsday, so again only one need suffice. After being kicked out of the Proctor household by Elizabeth for having an affair with her husband, Abby immediately sets out for revenge. But it's not enough that she gets payback for what happened to her; she needs to destroy Elizabeth Proctor; she needs to see her dangling from the end of a rope as a convicted witch. Only then will Abby's thirst for vengeance finally be slaked.

Examples of Abigail Williams being cruel and lying are, unfortunately, very easy to find in this play, and there are many, many of them.  The first comes within her very first few lines--she lies to her uncle about what was happening in the forest when he discovered her and her friends dancing there.  She insists that "we did dance, uncle,...and there's the whole of it."  Well, come to find out later, she was lying through her teeth.  Not only were they dancing, but one of them was dancing around naked, AND, Abby herself was praticing witchcraft--drinking a potion to kill off Elizabeth Proctor.  So, Abby totally lies about what happened in the woods.

She also lies about her involvement in the events that night when she accuses Tituba of bewitching her.  She comes right out lies and says that all of the horrible things she's done in the past bit--laughing during prayers, walking around naked, thinking bad thoughts--are all because Tituba made her do it.  It's a flat-out lie to protect herself from being accused of witchcraft herself.  Later, she lies about the needle in her belly, claiming that Elizabeth's "spirit" put it into her when we all know that she stabbed herself to frame Elizabeth.

Examples of cruelty are just as abundant.  When Betty points out that Abby had been drinking a potion to kill Elizabeth, she "smashes her across the face" and threatens her to be quiet.  Then, she threatens all of the other girls, saying that she will bring a "pointy reckoning" on all of them if they tell anyone that.  Later, Mary Warren is so afraid of Abby's cruelty that she cries out saying that "She'll turn on me" if she dares tell the truth.  And not to state the obvious, but condemning innocent people to die and hang is something that Abby does over and over throughout the course of the play, and you can't get much more cruel than that.

I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!

Arthur Miller provides many examples of Abigail Williams’s villainy. However, before I help you with specifics, I think you might try to find a more specific way to describe Williams. Perhaps “villain” is too strong. After all, Williams is not an evil character in a superhero movie. She’s not Bane or Sandman. She’s a young, poor, orphaned woman in a remarkably repressive and sexist society.

While her marginalized position doesn’t excuse her villainous actions, it might be helpful to take them into consideration in order to better understand why she acts with such deceit and cunning. Maybe if Salem society granted females like her more power, she wouldn’t have resorted to such devious means to acquire power, agency, or acknowledgement.

With that said, let’s locate one example of Abigail's shady, violent, or villainous ways. I’m thinking of a scene early on that involves Abigail and her cousin. They’re talking about what they did in the forest. Betty reminds Abigail that she drank blood. She also reminds Abigail that she tried to put a curse on John Proctor’s wife. For speaking the truth, Abigail “smashes her across the face.”

Another scene that speaks to Abigail's underhanded, calculating, or villainous ways concerns her departure. After creating the deadly hysteria, Abigail leaves. She runs away. It’s almost like she can’t face the death and destruction that she caused. Yet perhaps this specific example reveals that Abigail isn’t so villainous. If she were such a villain, she might want to stick around and bask in the chaos and death that her false charges produced. Maybe she does have feelings. Perhaps the destruction got to her. She couldn't take it anymore.

Now that you have two examples of Abigail’s villainy, you should be able to find a third on your own. Although, again, you might want to question whether “villain” is the most accurate word. After all, she never actually sentenced anyone to death. It was Danforth, Hawthorne, and Hale who did that.