After Eddie, Alfieri's is probably the most important role in the play. He is, of course, in some (not much) of the action, as Eddie consults him. This is essential, as it explains how he has come to know the story. Miller has said that he wanted to make this play a modern equivalent of classical Greek tragedy. In the ancient plays, an essential part was that of the chorus: a group of figures who would watch the action, comment on it, and address the audience directly.
In A View from the Bridge, Alfieri is the equivalent of the chorus. He introduces the action as a retelling of events already in the (recent) past. By giving details of place, date or time, he enables the action to move swiftly from one episode to another, without the characters having to give this information. This is often skilfully mixed with brief comment: "He was as good a man as he had to be...he brought home his pay, and he lived. And toward ten o'clock of that night, after they had eaten, the cousins came". Because much of this is fact, we believe the part which is opinion.
We also trust a lawyer to be a good judge of character and rational, because he is professionally detached. Alfieri is not quite detached, however. His connection with Eddie is slight: "I had represented his father in an accident case some years before, and I was acquainted with the family in a casual way". But in the next interlude, Alfieri tells us how he is so disturbed, that he consults a wise old woman, who tells him to pray for Eddie. You should consider what Alfieri says in each of the interludes, and you must be able to find them quickly.
In the brief scenes in which Alfieri speaks to Eddie, we gain an insight into his idea of settling for half. He repeatedly tells Eddie that he should not interfere, but let Catherine go, "and bless her", that the only legal question is how the brothers entered the country "But I don't think you want to do anything about that".
As Eddie contemplates the betrayal, Alfieri reads his mind and repeatedly warns him: "You won't have a friend in the world...Put it out of your mind".
Alfieri as the chorus/narrator need never leave the stage. Stage directions refer not to exits and entrances but to the light going down or coming up on Alfieri at his desk, as we switch from the extended bouts of action (flashbacks to Alfieri) to the interludes which allow him to comment, to move forward in time, and give brief indications of circumstantial detail, such as the source of the whisky Eddie brings home at the start of Act Two. Alfieri's view is also the "view from the bridge" of the title. To those around Eddie, those "on the water front", the events depicted are immediate, passionate and confused. But the audience has an ambiguous view. In the extended episodes of action we may forget, as Marco lifts the chair, or as Eddie kisses Rodolpho, that Alfieri is narrating. What we see is theatrical and exciting; we are involved as spectators. But at the end of the episode, as the light goes up on Alfieri, we are challenged to make a judgement. If Eddie, as we see him, appeals to our hearts, Alfieri makes sure we also judge with our heads.
At the start Alfieri compares himself with a lawyer in the time of Caesar,
“Another lawyer, quite differently dressed, heard the same complaint and sat there as powerless as I, and watched it run it’s bloody course.”
He describes himself to a roman, (an Italian.) Perhaps Alfieri knows of something similar that happened to one of his ancestors who was also a lawyer. But also in this one short bit he gives away quite a lot of the story from just one word “bloody” it shows that something dire is going to happen to one of the Carbone’s which may actually kill someone. As blood is connected with pain, grief and death.
Further on in Act one, when Eddie goes to seek out help from Alfieri. One of the replies Alfieri gives is.
“There’s nothing illegal about a girl falling in love with an immigrant” Is he comparing his parents love to the love of Eddies niece and Rodolfo? This is the only bit when Alfieri gives his own view, I also believe that by this small sentence he is trying to stop Eddie interfering so he can perhaps halt or give a different route for the “bloody course.”
“His eyes were like tunnels; my first thought was that he had committed a crime, but soon I saw it was only a passion that had moved into his body, like a stranger”
Alfieri almost seems to fear Eddie as a paranormal beast, a remnant of the great Greek or Roman tragedy. Alfieri believed that Eddie was possessed with, “passion” and was unable to control him. The passion that Alfieri describes is the passion for his niece Catherine. The passion, unreleased and suppressed in his unconscious self was a stranger to Eddie’s conscious self that actively denied any thoughts of incest or otherwise.
“I looked in his eyes more then I listened” Alfieri is oblivious as to what Eddie is saying but instead he stares deeply and intensely into Eddie’s eyes, where he notices that “his eyes were like tunnels” which proves that Alfieri is trying to portray Eddie as quite a sinister character, that has a very one-sided view on everything. He describes Eddie’s eyes as tunnels, which are dark and you never quite know where they may end up. Possibly this scares Alfieri into not wanting to give Eddie advice instead he does somewhat seem against Eddie, he fires questions trying to make Eddie feel uncomfortable and guilty but it does not seem to work, it just rages Eddie more.
“what does your wife say?”, “What did you do that for Eddie?” and “She actually said she’s marrying him?”.
Although Alfieri tries to be unbiased and gain no opinions he obviously does. He thinks of Eddie as a beast when in fact he is just a man confused with all the emotions he’s bottled up about his niece. Alfieri, being half immigrant himself he is more on Rodolfo and Marco’s side. But perhaps Alfieri is being torn, he is the bridge being stretched from both sides, on one end is Eddie and his family when on the other is Rodolfo and Marco, Rodolfo and Catherine both want to cross when Eddie wants to break it.
