Alferi's Opening Speech

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English Coursework

A view From the Bridge-Arthur Miller

-Discuss the ways in which Alferi’s opening speech prepares the

audience for what is to come in the play A View from The Bridge.

Arthur Miller was born on October 17th,1915 in new York city with both

of his parents being immigrants into the united States. His father’s

success with his clothing manufacturing business made the family live

well untill the American economy collasped and Arthur Miller had to be

employed as a warehouseman in order to pay his school feel at Michigan

university in 1934 where he studied Economics and history. In

university playwriting became his primary ambition which led him to

earn his living from journalism and writing radio scripts in 1938

after graduating. During World War Two he also worked as a shipfitter

for two years in the Brooklyn Navy Shipyard, where a near majority of

workers were Italian and where Miller made connections with their

family centered concerns.

His first proffessionally produced stage play, The ManWho Had All The

Luck failed on Broadway in 1944. In 1947 his play All My Sons became

successful and won the Pultizer prize in 1949 for Death of a Salesman.

He also wrote plays on social events happening in USA such as The

Crucible which he wrote about the reaction to witch-hunt of left

sympathizers. He first produced a one-act play in verse of A View from

the Bridge in 1955, followed by a two-act play in 1956which was

produced in the Comedy Theatre in London. His marriage to Marilyn

Monroe, the star, ended in 1961 after about five years of marriage.

But Arthur Miller continued to write plays and became one of America’s

most accomplished playwrights with most relating to social issues or

events, politics etc.

A View from the Bridge was an idea that generated out of Arthur

Miller’s interest in the work and lives of the communities of

dockworkers and longshoremen of New York’s Brooklyn harbour where he

used to work. He encounted many immigrant workers and heard stories of

how relatives with immigrants lived. He was once told a story similar

to what he writes in this play which could have helped to fuel the

play into what it is today. Arthur Miller visited Italy and witnessed

first hand at how men gathered around their localities in hope of

getting jobs. He combined these images and stories with a modern

version of a Greek tragedy thus a central charcter led by fate towards

an unavoidable destiny.

In most Greek tragedies we note the central character is a king or

public figure being led towards fate and fights to get at what his

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