The premonition in Alfieri’s soliloquy make the audience think. It makes them ask question like who’s going to die? How are they going to die? Why are they going to die? The audience want to know the answers to all of these questions right at the beginning of the play and will start to guess what will happen, yet they have to pay attention to understand what is going on and make predictions.
The personalities of the characters greatly affect the tension of this part of the play. For example, if Marco were not so silent and still, his threat would not be so obvious. When he “takes a chair, places it in front of Eddie, and looks down at it” it is a contrast to his natural behaviour. Eddie, however, still does not get it, as he believes that the world revolves around him. It is not until Marco “transforms what might appear like a glare of warning into a smile of triumph” that he notices anything unusual. Eddie is far too wrapped up in his hatred of Rodolfo to notice any subtleties, until eye contact is made. Then his “grin vanishes as he absorbs the look”. This creates tension by emphasising Eddie’s preoccupation with himself. The audience would be willing for him to realize what is going on, for him to realize that this is not just a show of strength. When he finally gets it, the audience can then relax.
Miller’s stage directions contribute by calling attention to Eddie’s self-absorption because, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, he does not notice the thinly veiled threat until eye contact is made. All of the things that add to the tension are in the stage directions rather than the dialogue.
Alfieri’s soliloquy’s before the end of Act One all hint at the inevitably violent end of the play, mostly by direct references, such as “bloody course” and “I knew where it was going to end”.
The story, by being told in a series of flashbacks, also adds to the tension, once again by emphasising the unavoidable conclusion. The audience may wonder what is going to happen, how is it violent, why is it so certain? Thus tension is created.
As the language is colloquial, it implies that the people, rather than the government, rule the streets in 1940’s Brooklyn. It gives the play an air of unpredictability as the government has strict laws and the people do not. This adds to the tension, as the audience will not know what will happen next.
The themes of this play-the jealousy and pride of Eddie-are most understood by Marco. He seeks to exploit this with his challenge. He humiliates Eddie in front of his family. He makes his challenge clear and waits until he is sure Eddie cannot lift the chair and everyone is watching, as even “Rodolfo and Catherine have stopped dancing to watch”, before he lifts the chair quite easily. So Eddie is outdone by someone whom he seems to forget easily, and yet is always there, watching, taking in what’s going on. Eddie is so embarrassed as in this time and place respect is everything. This time the tension is there because the audience cannot understand why the characters do not see what they can see so clearly.
If this play was not set in 1940’s Brooklyn and was instead set in modern England, for example, where the sense of community is much less, the dramatic tension would not exist. In fact the situation would probably not have arisen at all. Catherine would have had more freedom, Eddie and Beatrice would have attended marriage counselling and most likely Marco and Rodolfo could have immigrated legally. The play would be quite boring.
In conclusion, many things contribute to the tension at the end of Act One. It would be nearly impossible to have the same sort of tension if just one aspect of the play was changed. The tension would probably remain but it would be utterly different. It could be more or less effective than the way it is now, but I feel it would be more likely that a master playwright like Arthur Miller would understand what he was doing, and would try and make the play as dramatic as he could, to get his point across.
