Arthur Miller Plays 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge

by Arthur Miller

"The greatest American dramatist of our age." ( Evening Standard)


In this collected works, five of Arthur Miller's most-produced and popular plays are brought together in a new edition, alongside an exclusive introduction by Ivo van Hove, the celebrated contemporary director of Miller's works.

All five plays were written by Miller within a ten-year period which began with his first Broadway hit, All My Sons , in 1947 which led Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times to state that 'theatre has acquired a genuine new talent.' This was followed in 1949 by his exploration of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, which went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The Crucible followed in 1953, produced during the McCarthy era and becoming a parable of the witch-hunting practices of a government determined to root-out Communists. A View from the Bridge, originally performed in 1955, concerns the lives of longshoremen in the Brooklyn waterfront and has remained one of Miller's most produced plays. Originally presented as a one-act companion piece to A Memory of Two Mondays , both plays explore the dreams and working lives of ordinary Americans in the early decades of the 20th century.

Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 1 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Classics, Drama, Fiction, American

460 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 1988

About the author

Works of American playwright Arthur Asher Miller include Death of a Salesman (1949), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and The Crucible (1953).


This essayist, a prominent figure in literature and cinema for over 61 years, composed a wide variety, such as celebrated A View from the Bridge and All My Sons , still studied and performed worldwide. Miller often in the public eye most famously refused to give evidence to the un-American activities committee of the House of Representatives, received award for drama, and married Marilyn Monroe. People at the time considered the greatest Miller.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/d... winner of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play and it is included on other prestigious lists

10 out of 10





It is for the third time that I write a note on Death of a Salesman, which is one of the best known plays, and one of the best, which has been adapted frequently, one version is included on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list – by the way, you could try to check how many you have seen



The tragedy of Willy Loman, the Salesman from the title that makes clear what the public has to expect, is compelling, his name suggests for some critics (or maybe most) Low Man, the essence of his position, he is man that has been defeated, albeit we could also see him fighting back, trying to recover at times

Death of a Salesman brings to mind another superb play, Glengarry Glen Ross http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/05/g... by David Mamet, also a favorite, notwithstanding the recent (well, it might be six months since then, but Einstein said ‘sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it feels like a minute; sit on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like many hours…That's relativity”) discovery that Mamet appears to be a Trump supporter, absurd as that seems



Actually, as I have written that down, I do not believe it, it is tempting to look on the internet and check, but what good would that do, we have so many ‘fake news’ out there that it would take time and besides, we have Intellectuals http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/i... by Paul Johnson to consult and see that Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, Ernest Hemingway, Jean- Jacques Rousseau have been very difficult, to use an euphemism as humans, finding flaws with Mamet should not be a shock

In Glengarry Glen Ross we have a few salesmen competing with each other, an envoy from ‘Downtown’ aka splendid Alec Baldwin has a now classic message for them, showing off his watch, which costs more than the car of Ed Harris (one of a cast that has Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, the late Alan Arkin, prosecuted Kevin Spacey, a dream team, nec plus ultra), the ABC of sales, which is Always Be Closing



We have something like that in Death of a Salesman, when Willy Loman is trying to convince the son of his former employer to keep him on the payroll, fifty dollars, even forty dollars would be enough for him, and let us think how great a salesman he was, he tries to talk about the good old days, when he had such success…



Andrei Plesu is the greatest thinker http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/01/e... we have in our realm (which means he is one of the most remarkable in the world, for we are not in any way less gifted than the Americans…seventy million have voted with Trump in 2020, or Brazil, where they had one idiot, Lula, then another, Bolsanaro, and the list is long, let us stop here) and he insists that when we get old, we tend to talk about things that are irrelevant to others…

It feels like that when Willy Loman tries to keep his job, he lied to his family, bringing home money he took on loan, claiming he was paid, but his wife, Linda Loman, knows the truth and she tells their sons, Biff and Happy, about the ordeal of their father, how he drives for seven hundred miles (was it seven hundred miles) and he has nothing to show for it at his age, he has tried to commit suicide



There is a phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation, which is presented in the sublime Stumbling On Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/s... by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert, and it explains how we get used with almost anything, though we think we would be p if only we were to move to California, a Caribbean or Pacific Island (I used to dream that a Greek island will be the paradise for me, but look at Rhodes, Corfu, they have been on fire over the last few days)

In fact, when we make such a move, or buy a car, watch, material things, we find that The Power of Habit http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/07/t... is immense - hence, it is recommended that we spend money, if we must, but there are Stoic precepts and then the state of the planet, destroyed by consumerism, on experiences, travel and the like, and not on objects…



There are situations, events that we find very hard to adapt to, such as the Death of a Salesman, a Loved One http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/08/t... loud noises (do not move near an airport, or a loud, perpetually barking dog [as I had near me, together with the absolute moron of an owner] because you do not get used with that) or unemployment, which is the case of Willy Loman

Willy Loman had not had the chance to read positive psychology, The How of Happiness http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/t... by Sonja Lyubomirsky or else he would have found ‘Happiness Activity No 7: Learning to Forgive –keeping a journal or writing a letter in which you work on letting go of anger and resentment toward one or more individuals who’ve hurt or wronged you…’





Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se



As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

[Elizabeth Poulos]

This collection of plays was an easy and enjoyable read. Most of Miller's dialogue runs one sentence long for each character, most of the plays in it feature a very similar sort of tragedy related to masculinity in the mid-20th century, social, political, & economic tension, and a man who is forced to sacrifice or be killed for his unswaying core beliefs. Moreover, I found the lesser known works of the book, 'A View From the Bridge' and 'A Memory of Two Mondays' to be the most provocative, perhaps on a personal level.

As to how these plays stack up over half a decade after they were written and first performed, the works still carry a tremendous weight of emotional and political relevance in the western society in which Miller wrote. At times the language can be unintentionally comedic or confusing and the social rules on display have faded over time, but the emotion, vulnerabilities, and insecurities which shore them up still remain and remain viscerally.

On the edition of the book itself, there was a litany of spelling and punctuation errors which was annoying but not ultimately too distracting. Overall, if you're a fan of 20th century American tragedies surrounding stubborn men, you will enjoy going through this book.

[RJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Features five of Miller's very best plays over a legacy-forging time period, but it is the insider introduction here which is most preciously instructive. A must-own tome for any Miller fan, full of quotes to write by. A first revisit of The Crucible since high school proved the chilling and powerful highlight.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

از این مجموعه نمایش نامه، "خاطره ی دو دوشنبه" نیز به فارسی ترجمه شده، چون به یاد دارم که به فارسی خوانده ام، ولی به یاد ندارم منتشر هم شده باشد. همین طور نمایش نامه ی دیگر میللر "ارکستر زنان آشوئیتس"، که آن را در هیات کتاب فارسی، در یاد ندارم.
A Memory of Two Mondays is based on Miller's own experiences, The play focuses on a group of desperate workers earning their livings in a Brooklyn automobile parts warehouse during the Great Depression in the 1930s, a time of 25 percent unemployment in the United States. It explores the dreams of a young man yearning for a college education in the midst of people stumbling through the workday in a haze of hopelessness and despondency.
The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, or the Girls' Orchestra of Auschwitz, was a female orchestra at Auschwitz concentration camp, created in June 1943 by a Polish music teacher, by order of the SS. The members were young female jews prisoners, whose membership in the orchestra protected them from being gassed in the gas chamber. The conductor was eventually Alma Rose, the daughter of Gustav Mahler's sister Justine and her husband Arnold Rose. The orchestra played at the gate, during the final stages of the Holocaust, when the large numbers of Jews were sent directly to the gas chambers. The orchestra played in order to put the minds of the victims at ease. Realizing that the musicians get better treatment than other prisoners, playing for the Nazis, however, robs the women of much of their dignity and most of them often questioned whether remaining alive was worth the abuse they constantly suffer.

[Tobi Ayeleke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I somewhat like the crucible, I felt the book was interesting in the beginning, but as the pages went on, the excitement began to die down. i thought it was going to be a book about how witches were hunted down, but i found out it was more to it, and it actually about the communist society. The people who I would recommend this book to would be people who have read animal farm before and book that have a hidden message in it. Overall, the book was fine and always kept me on my toes.

[Tovah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miller is a practically flawless playwright. I haven't read this particular anthology, but it contains my three favorite Miller plays (All my Sons, Crucible, Salesman) so I'd recommend it based on that.

[Ayne Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a word, glorious.

[Jeannie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the play of a death of a salesman and liked it but found it to be very confusing dialoge.

[j_ay · Rating 4 out of 5]

All My Sons ***oo
Death of a Salesman *****
The Crucible ****o
A Memory of Two Mondays **ooo
A View from the Bridge ***oo

[Shana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished: All My Sons and Death of a Salesman

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

All excellent plays.