What makes "A View from the Bridge" 'good' theatre?

Allegra Gacsall

A View from the Bridge

By Arthur Miller

What makes “A View from the Bridge” ‘good’ theatre?

I am going to write an essay on the play “A View from the Bridge” written by Arthur Miller, and I am going to analyse how Miller uses different techniques to create the many effects that make the play such good theatre. The script is based on longshoreman, Eddie Carbone who lives with his niece Catherine and his wife Beatrice. When Italian relatives of Beatrice come to stay with them, conflict occurs as Rodolpho and Catherine become romantically entwined with each other, their relationship eventually ending in marriage, but at the same time Eddie experiences incestuous feelings for her. Alfieri acts as a character (a lawyer), and a narrator – he helps us to understand the story.

One element that makes the play good theatre is its format because it has a lay out that is easily recognisable. Although it is essentially a modern American play, it is like a classic Greek Tragedy; a good man has a fatal flaw in his character and he is eventually brought down by this. Also there is a typical chorus which follows the Greek Tragedy structure. Alfieri is the chorus; he is the “View from the Bridge”.

Miller uses the character of Alfieri and to create many different effects to engage and focus the audience. Alfieri has a number of roles in the play; he is, in essence, the “View from the Bridge” as he narrates the story looking over people from above, observing their actions. He watches as Eddie falls in love with Catherine, but he observes from a distance, and tells the story how it is. He shapes and tells the story so the audience are aware of details such as social, cultural and historical aspects of it. He acts as a link between the American and Sicilian cultures because he linked together Eddie’s American family and Catherine’s Sicilian family. He also acts as a link between the legal law and the moral law when he plays his role as a lawyer but then also gets involved in the moral side to Eddie’s love for Catherine. I think that these links maybe referred back to the title, which I believe has a lot of hidden meaning. The house in which Eddie’s family live, acts as a ‘bridge’ between Sicilian and American cultures. Another ‘bridge’ in the play is the one that Alfieri has. He fills the gap between the characters and the audience. He introduces the characters as we meet them and he helps us to form a better view of them and makes them seem better than what they are on stage. He likes to make the characters seem good.

“ALFIERI: He was as good a man as he had to be…” (pg26)

This shows how he helps the audiences’ view of the character to be more approving as he talks about Eddie and points out his good points that do not come across so clearly on the stage; he ameliorates our view of him. Alfieri acts similar to a controller as he guides the audience in their view of Eddie. He also builds up our trust by characterising the audience by direct address using the word ‘you’ to talk to us and he ‘smiles’ as he talks. Another function he has is to diffuse the tension on stage. He has a calm presence and at key points in the play he cools down the dramatic tension that has been created by other characters. At the end of Act one the tension has built up between Eddie and the other characters on stage; Catherine, Rodolpho, Marco and Beatrice. The tension has really heated up and needs to be calmed so Alfieri takes on this task when he speaks at the start of the next act. He comes on to stage and speaks a long piece of dialogue, which slows the pace down in contrast to the short, abrupt sentences at the end of the last act. Also, as the first person to talk in Act two, Alfieri creates a sense of coldness as he talks about the ‘cold’ and the date, ‘December’. This creates a great contrast between the heat of the tension in the previous scene and acts as a measure to diffuse it. Another function this has is to show how time is passing by. He achieves this by mentioning the date the “On the twenty-third of that December” then mentioning it again as “December twenty-seventh”. This shows how quickly time is passing, something that can’t realistically be shown on stage. The dramatic impact of that is so the audience can see how time is moving closer and this increases the pressure. The effect this has also is that it shows how things are getting much more desperate for Eddie as the period of time he has to sort out his problems is getting shorter. Also, the mention of Christmas shows what tension there is because Christmas is often a tense time for families.

Another function Miller uses Alfieri for is to foreshadow and hint at what is going to happen. His job as a lawyer suggests that there will be run-ins with the law, court case maybe and possibly disaster. The effect this has on the audience is that they have a suspicion that something bad is going to happen. This shows good theatre because it keeps us interested in what is going on as we are aware that something disastrous will occur but we do not when or what it will be.

Miller also changes Alfieri’s role in the play and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Another function Miller uses Alfieri for is to foreshadow and hint at what is going to happen. His job as a lawyer suggests that there will be run-ins with the law, court case maybe and possibly disaster. The effect this has on the audience is that they have a suspicion that something bad is going to happen. This shows good theatre because it keeps us interested in what is going on as we are aware that something disastrous will occur but we do not when or what it will be.

Miller also changes Alfieri’s role in the play and uses him as a character. I can see his role has changed because instead of having long passages of dialogue aimed at the audience (where his role is as a narrator), he holds conversations with other characters. We see his interaction between him and Eddie and this brings out Eddie’s character even more. The effect this has on the audience is that we can see more of Eddie’s personality and what he is feeling. Eddie is nervous, “his eyes were like tunnels” (pg45), and he is emotional, subjective and unreasonable. He easily gets annoyed with Alfieri.

“EDDIE: I know what’s in his mind, Mr Alfieri!” (pg45)

The fact that in the script, Miller has chosen to use italics suggests that he wants the actor to shout it or just really emphasise the sentence and this shows how angry Eddie is but also how irrational he is being with Alfieri.

“EDDIE: Listen … will you listen to me a minute? … I want you to listen to me.” (pg45)

This really highlights how unfair Eddie is being to Alfieri as he has come for advice and that is what Alfieri is trying to give him. Alfieri’s character is a big dramatic contrast to Eddie’s as he just seems reasonable and objective.

“ALFIERI: I’m only a lawyer, Eddie.” (pg 45)

This is like saying, I’m only saying what I’ve been taught to and I can only do my job. He is being very rational with him but Eddie is just throwing it back in his face. The structure of the conversation shows emotion versus objectivity. All these different aspects of Alfieri make “A View from the Bridge” such good theatre because Miller can use one character in so many different roles to create so many various effects.

I am now going to analyse how Miller uses different and interesting themes to make the play good theatre. The most obvious theme is that of love but there are two very different forms of love. Eddie’s forbidden incestuous love for his niece Catherine and Rodolpho’s genuine love for Catherine. It is made clear from the very start of the play that Eddie notices how attractive Catherine is.

“EDDIE: Listen, you been givin’ me the willies the way you walk down the street, I mean it.” (pg 14)

He disapproves of Catherine’s skirt which he describes as too “short”. This shows how he likes to oversee the way Catherine lives, he is very protective of her, and he doesn’t like her to expose herself to other men, probably due to jealousy, as he wants her to be only for himself. I do not think he realises his feelings towards her at first and during the play the audience know more about how he loves her than he does himself. This is dramatic irony because the audience know more than Eddie. This engages the audience because they know something that not all the characters know.

The other form of love is the love that is shared between Rodolpho and Catherine. Eddie however is very jealous and so accuses Rodolpho of only being interested in Catherine because he wants American citizenship. He also tries to suggest to Catherine that Rodolpho is gay by kissing him in a drunken rage. He hates the fact that Catherine and Rodolpho have fallen in love. This makes the play good theatre because it keeps the audience engaged in what is going on as they want to know what is going to happen next in this strange love triangle.

Another theme Miller uses in “A View from the Bridge” is law. This theme is mainly shown through Alfieri, the lawyer. There are two types of law, legal and moral. There are the legal aspects of Eddie’s ‘illegal’ feelings for Catherine but there are also some moral aspects behind it because there is moral justice in what Eddie is feeling. The fact that Alfieri is a lawyer also highlights this theme and when he holds conversations with Eddie he is looking at it from a legal angle as well as trying to give Eddie helpful advice. Marco also stresses the law theme when he argues with Alfieri.

“MARCO: The law? All law is not written in a book.” (pg 79)

This shows that he believes there are moral aspects to law as well as the laws that make things legal and illegal.

Family loyalty is also a theme that Miller uses in his play. In America at the time when the play was written, loyalty to your family and community were big issues. Everyone would stick together through better and worse and would be faithful to each other. This is important because it means Eddie must stick by his family and not go against them although we find out at the end of the play, when he reveals that the Italians are immigrants, that he is not going to be loyal to his family and this has disastrous consequences for him.

“EDDIE: …Which he called me a rat in front of the whole neighbourhood?” (pg 82)

This quote shows how important the community is to the family because Eddie is so aggravated that he has been shown up in front of them. Family loyalty is shown in the way Beatrice has let her two cousins stay with them although it is risky and illegal and she sticks by them even when the immigration officers arrive. It also strongly shows how valued your family ‘name’ was.

“EDDIE: I want my name! … Marco’s got my name…” (pg 82)

It shows how important it is to have a standing in the community and how bad it is to show up the family name.

“EDDIE: Wipin’ the neighbourhood with my name like a dirty rag!” (pg 84)

This quote shows how Eddie believes Marco has lost him the respect that he had. But he loses the respect himself by reporting Marco and Rodolpho to immigration and he then tries to deny his actions and turns to revenge. This is good theatre because it is relating to the real world of how communities in America at that time worked so the audience can connect with it.

Miller uses stage directions to create dramatic effect and to foreshadow what will happen next. If the directions are followed correctly by the actors, it will create a sense of tension on stage. Miller shows he wants this by using words within the stage directions such as “frightened”, “unsteadily” and “panting for breath”. This technique makes the play good theatre because the audience can see how angry Eddie is and they can clearly see the character’s inner feelings. The instructions are sometimes very difficult but they are precise and they enable the audience to see the emotions. Lighting is also used to create dramatic effect. In act two, when the phone booth glows this has a couple of effects. It foreshadows to the audience that someone is going to make a phone call which will be important because the phone is lit up, and it also shows the feelings on stage because it is a “faint, lonely blue” (pg 67). It is important because it emphasises the harshness of Eddie’s actions and make the audience aware that this is a crucial point. This shows that at that point Eddie feels lonely and this is also shown when Alfieri says “You won’t have a friend in the world, Eddie!” The booth is lit before he says this, but both the events are telling us the same thing. This is good theatre because the audience already know that something is wrong because of the lighting but they do not know exactly what but then they are proved correct after Alfieri has spoken his words and confirmed what they were thinking. Another way in which Miller cleverly uses lighting is to make them go up and down when Alfieri is on stage and swapping between being narrator and actually a character within the setting. It helps to set the mood and to point out to the audience that Alfieri has now changed his role. It also creates the sense that time is passing as the swap between light and dark shows day and night. I think this effect is good theatre because Miller is using subtle things to hint and help the audience understand the emotions on stage.

Great dramatic climax is built up during act one. By the end of the act, there is terrible tension involving Eddie ‘against’ the other characters. As the play progresses towards this point and after it, we feel as if something tragic is inevitably going to happen. The climax is definitely at the end of act one when Eddie is teaching Marco to fight and Marco lifts a chair high above Eddie’s head, the object “raised like a weapon”. Marco then gives a “smile of triumph” and as Eddie realises what Marco could do next, his expression dramatically changes as his grin disappears. This shows just how scared he is and the moment is so tense because Marco could at any point he wanted, bring the chair down hard on his head. We do not find out if he does however, as the curtain falls and the audience are left with that tension of the final scene before the beginning of act two.

Dramatic irony is brought into the play through Eddie. When Eddie explains the story about their previous neighbour Vinny Bolzano (pg 23), he reacts as if he is shocked about Vinny “snitching” to immigration. He says to Catherine;

“EDDIE: … you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.” (pg 24)

This reveals Eddie’s really illogical character. Here he is telling Catherine of how she mustn’t tell immigration about their Italian relatives living with them yet then he goes and phones immigration himself. This creates good theatre because of the dramatic irony in it. In what he says here, he is just explaining what will later happen to him after he has told just like what happened to Vinny.

All of the characters in “A View from the Bridge” have different dramatic functions. Throughout the play, the three main characters, Eddie, Catherine and Beatrice hold the power at various times. At the beginning of the play, Eddie holds the power as he makes the decision about Catherine getting a job. He doesn’t like the idea and tries to persuade his wife and niece that her going out to work as stenographer is not a good thought but eventually he gives in and says, “All right, go to work.” (pg 20) but still the outcome is still decided by Eddie as he makes the final decision. However, later on in the play, Catherine has the power.

“CATHERINE: I’m gonna get married, Eddie.” (pg 71)

This shows how Catherine is now telling Eddie what she is going to do. She doesn’t wait for him to give her permission or for him not to allow it; she simply tells him what she is going to do. Beatrice also has power in the play. She stands as a barrier between Catherine and Eddie as she helps Catherine to move out. She gives her advice in a maternal way but her underlying motive is to protect her marriage because she can see that Eddie has feelings for Catherine and therefore once she has moved out, he will be more of a husband to her again. She helps the audience to understand his motives by highlighting the difficulties in their marriage. These different points of power make good theatre because it shows contrast within the characters roles so they don’t always contribute the same way to the story.

Beatrice has a number of dramatic functions in Miller’s play. She gains the audience’s approval by doing nothing wrong and this helps the audience to judge Eddie from her view because they like her. She is the peacemaker in the story because when Eddie and Catherine are arguing, she steps in to spread the blame to other people and to take some of the blame herself. She also helps Eddie as she slowly helps him to understand himself more and what he is feeling by bringing out their complications.

“BEATRICE: When am I gonna be a wife again, Eddie?” (pg 36)

She realises that their marriage is drifting apart so confronts Eddie about it but he is unwilling to talk about it. This creates good theatre because it makes the audience see Eddie in a different light and shows how Beatrice’s character helps us to understand his emotions.

After reading the script of “A View from the Bridge”, I was left feeling as though the play was part of my life and think I felt like this because of the way Arthur Miller used techniques to such good effect and made the play into such good theatre; the way the tension is built up to a big dramatic climax, the way the characters take different roles at different points in the play, the way feelings are subtly shown to the audience using unusual techniques like lighting and stage directions and also by what other characters say to bring out the contrast in emotions. I have explored the effects of characters, dramatic devices, structures, ideas and themes and looked at the play in a social and cultural context. I believe that “A View from the Bridge” written by Arthur Miller is good theatre.