Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman
The other tragedy of a working man, six years earlier, with memories instead of a narrator.
Read our takeA View from the Bridge
Arthur Miller
A View from the Bridge
A Brooklyn longshoreman, two cousins off the boat from Italy, and a lawyer who stands at the side of the stage telling you how it ends before it happens.
- 1955
- 96
About Arthur Miller
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeA View from the Bridge opened at the Coronet Theatre in New York on 29 September 1955, in one act, on a double bill with A Memory of Two Mondays. Martin Ritt directed, Van Heflin played Eddie Carbone, and the same company acted both plays. The evening ran 149 performances and closed on 4 February 1956.[1] The playbill gave the setting as the apartment and environment of Eddie Carbone, all in Red Hook, on the bay seaward from Brooklyn Bridge.[1] Miller then rewrote it. In 1956 he turned the one act into two for Peter Brook to stage in London, and the two-act version is the text now printed and performed.[2][3] The record here follows the two-act text, which Penguin publishes with a foreword by Philip Seymour Hoffman and an introduction by Miller.[3]
The story, in more detail
Eddie Carbone works the docks in Red Hook, the Brooklyn neighbourhood under the harbour end of the bridge. He lives with his wife Beatrice and her orphaned niece Catherine, and the household has been the same for years.[3] Beatrice's cousins Marco and Rodolpho then arrive from Italy without papers, to work and send money home, and Eddie takes them in as everybody in the neighbourhood does.[4]
Catherine and Rodolpho fall for each other, and Eddie cannot say what is wrong with it. He offers reasons — Rodolpho sings, dyes his hair, cooks, wants an American wife for the papers — and none of the reasons is the reason. Penguin's own description of the play calls it the meeting point of one man's self-delusion and the brutal trajectory of fate, which is a fair account of how little Eddie understands about what is driving him.[5]
Alfieri, a Red Hook lawyer, narrates. He addresses the audience directly between the scenes, tells them he has watched this happen and could not stop it, and then steps into the action to give Eddie legal advice he will not take.[4] Nobody in the play has any doubt where it is going, because Alfieri says so at the start.
The play was first published in New York by Viking in 1955 and in London by Cresset in 1957.[6] Arthur Miller had been in Red Hook eight years before he wrote it. In 1947 he went down to the docks to get inside the longshoremen's world. He was also looking for Pete Panto, a dockworker who had crossed his union and disappeared. That research first produced a screenplay, The Hook, which pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee stopped from being made in 1951.[2]
The full story
Alfieri, a lawyer with an office in Red Hook, tells the audience at the start that he has seen this story run its course and could do nothing about it. Eddie Carbone is a longshoreman living with his wife Beatrice and Beatrice's orphaned niece Catherine, whom the household has raised. Catherine has just been offered her first job, and Eddie does not want her to take it.[4][3]
Beatrice's cousins Marco and Rodolpho arrive from Italy without papers. Marco is married, has three children and a sick wife at home, and means to work and send the money back. Rodolpho is young, unattached, sings, cooks and dyes his hair, and within weeks he and Catherine want to marry.[4]
Eddie objects on every ground except the real one. He tells Catherine that Rodolpho only wants American papers; he takes the young man's singing and his dressmaking as evidence that he is not a man; he starts drinking. He goes to Alfieri wanting the law to remove the cousins and is told there is no legal ground, and that the only thing the law could touch is the fact that they entered the country illegally.[4]
The first act ends with a boxing lesson that is not a boxing lesson, and the second act opens with Eddie coming home drunk to find Catherine and Rodolpho together. He orders Rodolpho out, Catherine says she is going too, and Eddie kisses her and then kisses Rodolpho in front of her. Alfieri, in the next narration, tells the audience that he saw Eddie's eyes and knew what was coming.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Eddie Carbone telephones the Immigration Bureau and reports the two cousins. Two officers arrive at the Lipari house, take the two "submarines" living upstairs, and then come for Marco and Rodolpho. The whole street watches it happen, and Dramatists Play Service's own description of the play calls it a devastating act of betrayal that shatters his community.
Marco names Eddie in the street as the informer, in front of the neighbours, and Eddie demands his name back. The last scene is their confrontation outside Eddie's own door, with Beatrice, Catherine and the neighbourhood present and Alfieri watching. Eddie Carbone does not get his name back, and Alfieri speaks the closing narration.
The final moments are not described here, and the reason is worth stating. The play is in copyright, every scanned edition is restricted to controlled lending, and the published summaries the record draws on stop at the betrayal and the confrontation. A reader who wants the last page will have to open the play.
Themes and analysis
Why the play has a narrator
Alfieri is a working lawyer with an office in the neighbourhood, and he is also the chorus. He opens the play, closes it, and speaks between the scenes, and he tells the audience in his first speech that he already knows the outcome. Dramatists Play Service lists him in the cast; J. Carrol Naish played him in 1955 and Michael Gwynn in London in 1956.
A narrator who gives away the ending removes suspense and puts something else in its place. An audience stops asking what will happen and starts watching how, which is the effect Greek tragedy gets from a story everybody in the theatre already knows. Miller had been thinking about exactly that. The published edition of the 1955 one-acts carried his essay "On Social Plays", written for the occasion.
Alfieri does a second job that the chorus of a Greek play cannot do: he is a lawyer, so he can state precisely what the law will and will not do for Eddie Carbone. Eddie comes to him wanting the cousins removed and is told there is no legal ground. That scene is where the play's whole problem gets named. What Eddie wants is not illegal for Rodolpho to do, and what Eddie is feeling has no name he is willing to use.
Directors have taken Alfieri in opposite directions. In the 1955 double bill the actors doubled across both plays, so J. Carrol Naish went from narrating this one to playing Gus in A Memory of Two Mondays. Ivo van Hove's 2015 staging, which won the 2016 Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Play and Best Direction of a Play, used one designer for both set and lighting, Jan Versweyveld, and both designs were nominated as well.
One act, then two: which text this is
The play exists in two shapes and the difference matters. The Broadway League's record of the 1955 Coronet production categorises it as a one-act play, staged as half of an evening with A Memory of Two Mondays. The Arthur Miller Society's chronology records what happened next: in 1956 Miller revised the play into two acts for Peter Brook to produce in London.
Brook's production opened at the Comedy Theatre on 11 October 1956 and ran until 20 April 1957, with Anthony Quayle as Eddie Carbone, Mary Ure as Catherine and Megs Jenkins as Beatrice. Brook designed it as well as directing it, and the producing body was the New Watergate Theatre Club rather than a commercial management. Two actors at the start of long careers were in the small parts: Richard Harris played Louis and Ian Bannen played Marco.
The two-act version is the one in print. Penguin's edition is subtitled a play in two acts and carries Miller's own introduction, and Dramatists Play Service licenses a full-length play of about two hours for a cast of fifteen. A reader who wants the one-act original has to go to the 1955 Viking printing of the two one-acts, which is where the essay "On Social Plays" also appears.
Expanding the play changed its balance rather than its plot. One act gives an audience Eddie Carbone's collapse as a single movement; two acts give Beatrice and Catherine room to argue with him, and give Marco time to become a person rather than a fate. Eileen Heckart created Beatrice on Broadway, and Jessica Hecht and Nicola Walker were both nominated for awards in the part in 2010 and 2016.
What Eddie Carbone cannot say
Eddie Carbone's objections to Rodolpho are all about manner. Rodolpho sings on the docks, makes a dress for Catherine, cooks, dyes his hair blond. Eddie turns each of these into evidence of something he will not name, and Dramatists Play Service's own summary of the play says plainly what is underneath: Eddie's unspoken feelings for his niece twist into jealousy when the cousins arrive.
Miller gives Eddie one physical action that says what the speeches cannot, and it is the moment the play is remembered for. In front of Catherine, Eddie kisses Rodolpho. The gesture is meant as an accusation and is also a confession, and it commits Eddie to a course he cannot argue his way out of afterwards. The London production of 1956 was mounted by a private theatre club, the New Watergate, whose audiences were members rather than ticket-buyers, rather than by a commercial management.
Marco is the countermeasure Miller builds into the same act. Marco is a married man with three children and a sick wife in Italy, working to send money home, and he has no interest in anything but the wage. Placed beside him, Eddie's objections to Rodolpho look like what they are. Jack Warden created Marco on Broadway.
The neighbourhood is the other half of the pressure. Two more undocumented men, listed in the cast as "submarines", are living upstairs in the Lipari house, and everybody on the street knows it. Informing on a submarine is the one thing the neighbourhood does not forgive, and Eddie has told Catherine so himself, in a story about a boy who did it. Dramatists Play Service licenses the immigration officers as speaking parts, so the state arrives on stage in person.
Red Hook, and the Italy the cousins came from
The setting is a real and specific half-mile. Red Hook is the working waterfront on the Brooklyn side, and the playbill's setting line places the whole play in Eddie Carbone's apartment and its surroundings there, on the bay seaward from Brooklyn Bridge. The title's bridge is that bridge, and the view from it is the view down onto the neighbourhood the play never leaves.
Miller had done the fieldwork for a different project. In 1947 he went into Red Hook to get inside the longshoremen's world and to find out about Pete Panto, a dockworker who had gone against the union and vanished, and the material became a screenplay called The Hook. Pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee stopped the film from being made in 1951, and the Red Hook research went instead into this play four years later.
The Italian half came from a separate trip. Miller went to Europe with Vinny Longhi in 1948 and, according to the Arthur Miller Society's chronology, got there the sense of the Italian background he would later use for the Carbones and their relatives. The cousins in the play are not a generic immigrant pair; they come from a place Miller had walked around, with a specific reason for leaving it.
Italy took the play up in turn. Raf Vallone played Eddie in Peter Brook's Paris staging, Vu du pont, which opened at the Théâtre Antoine on 11 March 1958 in Marcel Aymé's French adaptation, with Lila Kedrova as Béatrice and Marcel Bozzuffi as Marco. Sidney Lumet then filmed it with Vallone in 1961, and Renzo Rossellini made it into an Italian opera, Uno sguardo dal ponte, the same year.
Quotes from A View from the Bridge
In the apartment and environment of Eddie Carbone, all in Red Hook, on the Bay seaward from Brooklyn Bridge.
A Play in Two Acts
Why we recommend it
A narrator who gives away the ending on page one
Alfieri is a Red Hook lawyer and the play's chorus. He tells the audience in his first speech that he watched this happen and could not stop it, which removes suspense and replaces it with the thing Greek tragedy runs on: watching a known outcome arrive.
Short, and the one Miller rewrote
Under a hundred pages, and the text you buy is not the text that premiered. The 1955 Broadway version was one act on a double bill; Miller expanded it into two acts in 1956 for Peter Brook's London production, and the two-act version is what is printed, licensed and performed.
Built out of real fieldwork
Miller went into Red Hook in 1947 to get inside the longshoremen's world and to find out about Pete Panto, a dockworker who crossed his union and vanished. That research first became a screenplay the House Un-American Activities Committee helped kill in 1951, and then became this play.
It keeps winning Best Revival
Michael Mayer's 1998 Broadway production won two Tony Awards. Gregory Mosher's 2010 staging won Scarlett Johansson a Tony Award and Liev Schreiber a Drama Desk Award. Ivo van Hove's version took three Olivier Awards in 2015 and two Tony Awards in 2016.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Eddie Carbone
A Brooklyn longshoreman who has raised his wife's orphaned niece and cannot say, even to himself, what he feels about her now she is grown. Objects to her young man on every ground but the true one, and ends by informing on his own household guests. Van Heflin created the part; Anthony Quayle, Raf Vallone, Tony Lo Bianco, Anthony LaPaglia, Liev Schreiber and Mark Strong have all played it.
Beatrice
Eddie's wife and the cousins' relative, who sees what is happening in her own house long before anybody says it and is the only person who names it to Eddie's face. Eileen Heckart created the part; Megs Jenkins played it in London in 1956, and Jessica Hecht and Nicola Walker were both nominated for awards in it.
Catherine
Beatrice's orphaned niece, raised in the Carbone household, offered her first job as the play opens and in love with Rodolpho a few weeks later. Gloria Marlowe created the part; Mary Ure played it in London in 1956, and Scarlett Johansson won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for it.
Marco
The elder cousin, in the country illegally to earn for a wife and three children in Italy, one of whom is ill. Wants nothing but the wage, which is what makes Eddie's objections to his brother look like what they are. Jack Warden created the part; Ian Bannen played it in London and Marcel Bozzuffi in Paris.
Rodolpho
The younger cousin, unattached, who sings on the docks, cooks, makes a dress for Catherine and dyes his hair. Everything Eddie holds against him is a matter of manner rather than conduct. Richard Davalos created the part and won a Theatre World Award for it; Brian Bedford played it in London in 1956.
Alfieri
A Red Hook lawyer who narrates the play to the audience and then steps into it to tell Eddie that the law cannot help him. Knows the ending from his first speech and says so. J. Carrol Naish created the part, doubling as Gus in A Memory of Two Mondays on the same bill; Michael Gwynn played it in London in 1956.
Mr Lipari
A neighbour, the butcher, who is hiding two undocumented men upstairs in his own house. When the immigration officers arrive they take his relatives as well, which is how Eddie's phone call stops being a private act. Russell Collins created the part.
Louis
A longshoreman on Eddie's gang, one of two workmates who open the play and close it. Their turning away from Eddie in the last act is how the neighbourhood delivers its verdict. David Clarke created the part; Richard Harris played it in London in 1956.
Bring it to book club
- Alfieri announces the ending in his first speech. Did knowing make the play more gripping or less?
- Eddie Carbone gives four or five reasons for disliking Rodolpho and none of them is the reason. Which does he half believe?
- Marco is in the country illegally to keep three children alive. Does putting him beside Rodolpho settle the argument about Rodolpho?
- The neighbourhood punishes informing more harshly than anything else. Where does that code come from, and who does it protect?
- Miller expanded a one-act play into two acts. What do you think the extra act gives Beatrice and Catherine?
- Alfieri is a lawyer who tells Eddie the law cannot help him. Is that the play's verdict on the law, or on Eddie?
Timeline
1947
Miller goes into Red Hook to get inside the longshoremen's world and to find out about Pete Panto, a dockworker who crossed his union and disappeared. The research becomes a screenplay, The Hook.
1948
A European trip with Vinny Longhi gives Miller the Italian background he will later use for the Carbones and their relatives.
1951
Pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee stops The Hook from being made.
1955
The one-act version opens at the Coronet Theatre in New York on 29 September, directed by Martin Ritt, with Van Heflin as Eddie Carbone, on a double bill with A Memory of Two Mondays. It runs 149 performances. Viking publishes the two one-acts with Miller's essay "On Social Plays".
1956
Miller revises the play into two acts for Peter Brook, whose London production opens at the Comedy Theatre on 11 October for the New Watergate Theatre Club, with Anthony Quayle, Mary Ure and Megs Jenkins. It runs until 20 April 1957.
1958
Vu du pont opens at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris on 11 March, in Marcel Aymé's adaptation, staged again by Peter Brook, with Raf Vallone as Eddie and Lila Kedrova as Béatrice.
1961
Sidney Lumet films the play with Raf Vallone, and Renzo Rossellini turns it into an Italian opera, Uno sguardo dal ponte.
1983
Arvin Brown's Broadway revival at the Ambassador Theatre runs 149 performances, with Tony Lo Bianco nominated for a Tony Award.
1998
Michael Mayer's Roundabout Theatre Company production wins the Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Play and, for Anthony LaPaglia, Best Actor in a Play, after 239 performances.
2010
Gregory Mosher directs Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson at the Cort Theatre; Johansson wins the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.
2015
Ivo van Hove's staging reaches Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre with Mark Strong and Nicola Walker, after three Olivier Awards in London. It takes the 2016 Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Play and Best Direction of a Play.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Penguin Books
- 2009
- 9780143105572
- Paperback
- Penguin Books
- 2010
- 9780141189963
- Paperback
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- 2022
- 9781350245785
- Paperback
- Penguin Books
- 1961
- 9780435225797
Reader reviews
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Read our takeA View from the Bridge: frequently asked questions
What is A View from the Bridge about?
Eddie Carbone, a longshoreman in Red Hook, Brooklyn, lives with his wife Beatrice and her orphaned niece Catherine, whom the household raised. When Beatrice's cousins Marco and Rodolpho arrive from Italy without papers and Catherine falls for Rodolpho, Eddie's jealousy — which he will not name, even to himself — drives him to inform on his own guests. A Red Hook lawyer called Alfieri narrates and tells the audience the outcome in his first speech.
Is A View from the Bridge in one act or two?
Both, depending on the version. The 1955 Broadway premiere was a one-act play, performed on a double bill with A Memory of Two Mondays. Arthur Miller then revised it into two acts in 1956 for Peter Brook's London production, and the two-act text is the one printed by Penguin, licensed by Dramatists Play Service and performed today.
Why does the play have a narrator?
Alfieri gives the play the shape of a Greek tragedy, where the audience knows the ending and watches it arrive. He is also a working lawyer, so he can state exactly what the law will and will not do for Eddie Carbone, which is how the play names its own problem. Miller was thinking about the form at the time: the published edition of the 1955 one-acts carried his essay "On Social Plays".
Who was Pete Panto?
A Brooklyn dockworker who went against his union and disappeared. Miller went down to Red Hook in 1947 to find out about him and to get inside the longshoremen's world. The research first produced a screenplay called The Hook. Pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee stopped it from being filmed in 1951. The Red Hook material went into this play instead.
What is a submarine in the play?
Neighbourhood slang for a man who has come into the country illegally by ship and is living hidden. Two of them are being kept upstairs in the Lipari house, and Dramatists Play Service lists them in the cast. They matter because Eddie's phone call to the Immigration Bureau takes them too, which turns a private grudge into something the whole street has been injured by.
Which edition should I read?
The Penguin edition subtitled a play in two acts, which carries Miller's own introduction and a foreword by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Penguin's British paperback prints the same text at 96 pages. The Methuen Drama student edition from Bloomsbury adds editorial apparatus and production history. A reader who wants the original one-act version needs the 1955 Viking printing of the two one-acts.
How has it done in revival?
Well, and repeatedly. Broadway has revived it four times: 1983, 1998, 2010 and 2015. The last three all won major awards. Best Revival of a Play and Best Actor for Anthony LaPaglia in 1998; a Tony Award for Scarlett Johansson in 2010; Best Revival and Best Direction for Ivo van Hove in 2016. The London version won three Olivier Awards in 2015.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document A View from the Bridge, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1abA View From the Bridge / A Memory of Two Mondays — Broadway production records
Official recordInternet Broadway Database, The Broadway LeagueUsed forThe Broadway League's production records: the 1955 Coronet double bill with its dates, cast and doubling, the playbill setting line, and the 1983, 1998, 2010 and 2015 revivals with their awards.
2abMiller Chronology
WebsiteThe Arthur Miller SocietyUsed forThe scholarly society's chronology: the 1947 Red Hook research and Pete Panto, the 1948 Italian trip, the 1951 killing of The Hook, the 1955 one-act premiere and "On Social Plays", the 1956 revision into two acts for Peter Brook, and the 1961 Lumet film and Rossellini opera.
4abcdeA View from the Bridge — licensing record
Official recordDramatists Play Service, via Concord TheatricalsUsed forDramatists Play Service's licensing record: the character list, the cast of fifteen, the two-hour running time, the plot summary quoted here, and the Broadway and West End production history.
5↑Arthur Miller — edition and catalogue records
Official recordOpen Library, Internet ArchiveUsed forCatalogue and edition records: the two-act subtitle, the Penguin publisher's description quoted here, the page counts, and the publication history of the 1955 Viking and 1957 Cresset printings.
6↑Arthur Miller — scanned editions, access-restricted to controlled lending
ArchiveInternet ArchiveUsed forThe scanned editions, all access-restricted to controlled lending, which is why the plot section stops short of the final page and quotation here is confined to the playbill and the title page.
7A View from the Bridge — New Watergate Theatre Club at the Comedy Theatre, London, 1956
Official recordTheatricalia, 1956Used forThe production record for Peter Brook's London staging: the New Watergate Theatre Club at the Comedy Theatre from 11 October 1956 to 20 April 1957, Brook as both director and designer, and the cast from Anthony Quayle down to Richard Harris.
8Vu du pont, mise en scène Peter Brook (1958)
ArchiveLes Archives du spectacleUsed forThe production record for Vu du pont at the Théâtre Antoine on 11 March 1958: Marcel Aymé's adaptation, Peter Brook's staging, and the Paris cast.
9Timebends: A Life
MemoirMethuen, 1987Used forMiller's own memoir, the standard first-hand account of the Red Hook years and of the London rewrite. Listed as the standard reference; no claim above rests on it alone.
10A View from the Bridge
PlayArthur Miller, 1955Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
i
Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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