| Death of a Salesman | |
|---|---|
 First edition cover (Viking Press) | |
| Written by | Arthur Miller |
| Characters | Willy Loman Linda Loman Biff Loman Happy Loman Ben Loman Bernard Charley The Woman Howard |
| Date premiered | February 10, 1949 |
| Place premiered | Morosco Theatre New York City |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Tragedy |
| Setting | Late 1940s; Willy Loman's house; New York City and Barnaby River; Boston |
Death of a Salesman is a 1949stage play written by the AmericanplaywrightArthur Miller. The play premiered onBroadway on February 10, 1949, running for 742 performances. It is a two-acttragedy set in late 1940s Brooklyn told through a montage of memories, dreams, and arguments of the protagonistWilly Loman, atravelling salesman who is despondent with his life and appears to be slipping intosenility. The play addresses a variety of themes, such as theAmerican Dream, the anatomy of truth, and infidelity. It won the 1949Pulitzer Prize for Drama andTony Award for Best Play. Since its premiere, the play has been revived on Broadway five times, winning threeTony Awards for Best Revival. It has been adapted for the cinema ten times. In 1999,New Yorker drama criticJohn Lahr said that with 11 million copies sold, it was "probably the most successful modern play ever published."[1]
The genesis of the play was a chance encounter between Miller and his uncle Manny Newman, a salesman, whom he met in 1947 in the lobby of a Boston theater that was playingAll My Sons.[1] Miller later recounted that when he saw Manny at the theater, "I could see the grim hotel room behind him, the long trip up from New York in his little car, the hopeless hope of the day's business." Without acknowledging Miller's greeting or congratulating him on the play, Manny said "Buddy is doing very well."[1] Buddy was Manny's son, and Manny saw Miller and his older brother as "running neck and neck" with his two sons "in some race that never stopped in his mind." When visiting Manny as a youth, Miller felt "gangling and unhandsome" and usually heard "some kind of insinuation of my entire life's probable failure."[2] Seeing him again in Boston, Manny seemed to the playwright to be "absurd" and "so elaborate in his fantastic inventions," that "he possessed my imagination."[3] Manny died by suicide soon after.[2]
Miller had been thinking about a play about a salesman for years. He also had new interest in the simultaneousness of the past and present. Miller sought to "do a play without any transitions at all, dialogue that would simply leap from bone to bone of a skeleton that would not for an instant cease being added to, an organism as strictly economic as a leaf, as trim as an ant."[3] Miller was himself the model of the young Bernard.[3]
The play takes place in 1949. The setting is the Loman home inBrooklyn,[4] located amidst a typical row of urban apartment buildings.
Willy Loman suddenly returns home in the middle of the night, exhausted after a failed business trip to Boston. Worried over Willy's rapidly declining state of mind and a recent near-fatal car accident, his wife Linda suggests that he ask his boss, Howard, to allow him to work in his home city so he will no longer have to travel. Willy complains to Linda about their son, Biff, who is 34 years old and has yet to do something meaningful with his life. Despite Biff having a promising football career in high school with many scholarship offers, he failed in mathematics and was therefore unable to enter a university and spent years drifting around the Western United States working many odd jobs with no clear goal.
Biff and his younger brother, Happy, who is temporarily staying with Willy and Linda after Biff's unexpected return from the West, reminisce about their childhood together. They discuss their father's mental degeneration, which they have witnessed in the form of his constant indecisiveness and daydreaming about the boys' high school years. Eventually, Willy walks in, angry that the two boys have never amounted to anything. In an effort to pacify their father, Biff and Happy tell him that Biff plans to make an ambitious business proposition the next day.
The next day, Willy goes to Howard's office for a non-traveling job in town while Biff goes to make a business proposition, but they both fail. Howard staunchly refuses to give Willy a New York job, despite his desperate pleas and ignoring Willy's 34 years of devotion to the company. Willy then loses his temper and ends up getting fired when Howard tells him that he needs a long rest and is no longer allowed to represent the Wagner Company. On the other hand, Biff waits hours to see a former employer named Bill Oliver who does not remember him and turns him down. In response Biff, feeling crushed, impulsively steals a fountain pen. Willy then goes to the business office of his neighbor Charley, where he runs into Charley's son Bernard whom Willy used to arrogantly dismiss as an "anemic" loser back when Willy's sons were in high school. Bernard is now a wealthy and successful lawyer about to argue a case in front of theSupreme Court and is happily married and has two children of his own. Bernard tells him that Biff originally wanted to go to summer school to make up for failing math, but something happened in Boston when Biff went to visit his father that changed his mind. Charley then offers Willy a stable do-nothing job, but Willy vehemently refuses despite losing his job. Charley, who feels insulted, reluctantly gives the now-unemployed Willy money to pay off hislife-insurance premium, and Willy shocks Charley by remarking that ultimately, a man is "worth more dead than alive."
Happy, Biff, and Willy meet for dinner at a restaurant called Frank's Chop House, but Willy refuses to hear the bad news from Biff and constantly interrupts. Happy tries to coax Biff to lie to their father. Biff angrily tries to tell him what actually happened as Willy gets frustrated, withdraws to the restaurant's bathroom, and slips into aflashback of what happened in Boston the day Biff came to see him: Biff had come to Boston to ask Willy to convince his teacher to curve his failing math grade so he could graduate. However, Willy was in the middle of an extramarital affair with a receptionist named Miss Francis when Biff arrived unexpectedly, and saw the half-dressed woman with him. Biff did not accept his father's cover-up story for her presence, and angrily dismissed him as a liar and a fake before storming out. From that moment, Biff's views of his father changed and set him adrift.
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Biff leaves the restaurant in frustration, followed by Happy flanked by a pair of attractive women named Miss Forsythe and Letta, leaving a confused and devastated Willy behind. When they later return home, Linda scolds them for abandoning their father while Willy remains outside talking to himself. Biff tries to reconcile with Willy, but the discussion quickly escalates into emotional conflict. Biff conveys plainly to his father that he is not meant for anything great, insisting that both of them are simply ordinary, mediocre men meant to lead ordinary lives. The argument reaches an apparent climax as Biff hugs Willy and begins to cry as he pleads for Willy to let go of his unrealistic expectations. Rather than listen to what Biff actually says, Willy appears to believe his son has forgiven him and will follow in his footsteps, and after Linda goes upstairs to bed, lapses one final time into ahallucination, thinking he is talking to his long-dead estranged wealthy brother Ben. In Willy's mind, Ben "approves" of the scheme Willy has dreamed up to take his own life in order to give Biff his life insurance money to help him start a business and that his funeral will be well attended with all his admirers which will leave Biff feeling "thunderstruck". Willy then promptly exits the house, and Biff and Linda cry out in despair as the sound of Willy's car blares up and fades out. The car crashes and Willy instantly dies.
The final scene takes place at Willy's funeral. Linda and Happy stand in surprise after Willy's funeral is sparsely attended only by his family, Charley, and Bernard (who does not speak during the scene). Biff upholds his belief that he is no longer interested in becoming a businessman like his father and decides to go back West. Happy, on the other hand, chooses to follow in his father's footsteps. Linda who is liberated from her financial burdens begins to sob, repeating "We're free. . . ." All exit, and the curtain falls.
Notable casts
| Character | Broadway | Broadway Revival | Royal Shakespeare | Broadway Revival | Broadway Revival | Broadway Revival | Broadway Revival |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | 1975 | 1980 | 1984 | 1999 | 2012 | 2022 | |
| Willy Loman | Lee J. Cobb | George C. Scott | Bob Peck | Dustin Hoffman | Brian Dennehy | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Wendell Pierce |
| Linda Loman | Mildred Dunnock | Teresa Wright | Francesca Annis | Kate Reid | Elizabeth Franz | Linda Emond | Sharon D. Clarke |
| Biff Loman | Arthur Kennedy | James Farentino | Michael Maloney | John Malkovich | Kevin Anderson | Andrew Garfield | Khris Davis |
| Happy Loman | Cameron Mitchell | Harvey Keitel | Paul Greenwood | Stephen Lang | Ted Koch | Finn Wittrock | McKinley Belcher III |
| Uncle Ben | Thomas Calmers | Jack Somack | Peter Guiness | Steve Pickering | Louis Zorich | John Glover | André De Shields |
| Bernard | Joe Maross | Lewis J. Stadlen | Shaun Scott | David Chandler | Richard Thompson | Fran Kranz | Stephen Stocking |
| Charley | Howard Smith | James Greene | Paul Moriarty | Charles Durning | Howard Witt | Bill Camp | Delaney Williams |
| The Woman | Naomi Stevens | Rhian Cardiosa | Helen Mirren | Kathryn Rossetter | Kate Buddeke | Molly Price | Lynn Hawley |
Reality and illusion are prominent themes inDeath of a Salesman. The play uses flashbacks to present Willy's memories, but it is unclear whether they are accurate. He makes up lies about his and Biff's success. The more he indulges in the illusion, the harder it is for him to face reality. Biff realizes the problem and wants to face the truth. In this conflict, the play shows how the American Dream could be a lie.[6]
In several statements, Miller compared the play's characters to Greek tragedy. Miller wanted to show that the common man and those with status had much in common.[7][8]
Writing inThe New York Times in 1999, journalistJohn Tierney argued that the play was not constructed like a classical tragedy. He observed that the mental illness suffered by Loman was a "biochemical abnormality" that was "not the sort of tragic flaw that makes a classic play." But he noted that "Willy's fate is supposed to be partly a result of his own moral failings, in particular the adulterous affair [...], he is haunted by the memory of his infidelity and by the fear that it ruined his son's life."[2]
Death of a Salesman first opened on February 10, 1949, to great success. Drama criticJohn Gassner wrote that "the ecstatic reception accordedDeath of Salesman has been reverberating for some time wherever there is an ear for theatre, and it is undoubtedly the best American play sinceA Streetcar Named Desire."[9]Eric Bentley saw the play as "a potential tragedy deflected from its true course by Marxist sympathies."[9]
The play opened in London on July 28, 1949. British responses were mixed, but mostly favorable.The Times criticized it, saying that "the strongest play of New York theatrical season should be transferred to London in the deadest week of the year." Eric Keown, theatre critic ofPunch, praised the production for its "imagination and good theatre-sense", noting that "Mr. Elia Kazan makes a complicated production seem extraordinarily natural."[9]
The play was hailed as "the most important and successful night" inHebbel Theater in Berlin[when?]. Walter Meserve said that "it was impossible to get the audience to leave the theatre" at the end of the performance.[9]
Compared to Tennessee Williams and Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller and hisDeath of a Salesman were less influential. Rajinder Paul said that "Death of a Salesman has only an indirect influence on Indian theatre."[9] However, it was translated and produced in Bengali as'Pheriwalar Mrityu' by the theater group Nandikar. Director Feroz Khan adapted the play in Hindi and English by the name "Salesman Ramlal" played bySatish Kaushik, the son was portrayed by Kishore Kadam.[10][11]
Arthur Miller directed the play himself in China, stating that it was easier for the Chinese public to understand the relationship between father and son because "One thing about the play that is very Chinese is the way Willy tries to make his sons successful." Many traditional Chinese fathers want their sons to be 'dragons.'[12]
The original Broadway production was produced byKermit Bloomgarden and Walter Fried. The play opened at theMorosco Theatre on February 10, 1949, closing on November 18, 1950, after 742 performances. The play starredLee J. Cobb as Willy Loman,Mildred Dunnock as Linda,Arthur Kennedy as Biff,Howard Smith as Charley andCameron Mitchell as Happy.Albert Dekker andGene Lockhart later played Willy Loman during the original Broadway run. It won theTony Award for Best Play, Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Arthur Kennedy), Best Scenic Design (Jo Mielziner), Producer (Dramatic), Author (Arthur Miller), and Director (Elia Kazan), as well as the 1949Pulitzer Prize for Drama and theNew York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.Jayne Mansfield performed in a production of the play inDallas,Texas, in October 1953. Her performance in the play attractedParamount Pictures to hire her for the studio's film productions.[13]
The play has been revived onBroadway five times:
It was also part of theinaugural season of theGuthrie Theater inMinneapolis,Minnesota in 1963.
The title role was performed at thePlayhouse Theatre (Perth) in March 1979 byWarren Mitchell under the direction ofStephen Barry. In September 1979, Mitchell reprised the role for theRoyal National Theatre in London. "It was a performance that won him both an Evening Standard Award and an Olivier and was highly praised byPeter Hall (director), while Arthur Miller reportedly described the turn as one of the best interpretations of the part he had ever seen."[17][18]
Christopher Lloyd portrayed Willy Loman in a 2010 production by the Weston Playhouse inWeston, Vermont, which toured severalNew England venues.[19]
Antony Sher played Willy Loman in the firstRoyal Shakespeare Company production of the play directed byGregory Doran inStratford-upon-Avon in the spring of 2015, withHarriet Walter as Linda Loman. This production transferred toLondon'sWest End, at theNoël Coward Theatre for ten weeks in the summer of 2015. This production was part of the centenary celebrations for playwright Arthur Miller.[20]
The play ran from 24 October 2019 until 4 January 2020 at thePiccadilly Theatre in London, starringSharon D. Clarke andWendell Pierce.[21]
Anthony LaPaglia starred as Loman in the Australian production atHer Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne in the spring of 2023 andTheatre Royal Sydney in the winter of 2024. The play was directed byNeil Armfield. The cast includedAlison Whyte as Linda Loman,Josh Helman as Biff Loman, andBen O'Toole as Happy. The production opened to positive reviews in both cities.[22][23][24]
David Hayman played Willie Loman in aTrafalgar Theatre production directed byAndy Arnold which toured the United Kingdom and Ireland in the spring of 2025.[25]
Nathan Lane andLaurie Metcalf are set to star in a Broadway production in 2026, along withChristopher Abbott andBen Ahlers.[26] The production will be directed byJoe Mantello and produced byScott Rudin andBarry Diller. The play will be staged at theWinter Garden Theater with previews starting on March 6, and opening night on April 9. It will be the sixth Broadway revival of the play.[27]
Paul Mescal will play Biff Loman in aLyttelton Theatre production in 2027.[28]
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| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Won | |
| Best Author of a Play | Arthur Miller | Won | ||
| Best Producer of a Play | Kermit Bloomgarden & Walter Fried | Won | ||
| Best Featured Actor in a Play | Arthur Kennedy | Won | ||
| Best Director | Elia Kazan | Won | ||
| Best Scenic Design | Jo Mielziner | Won | ||
| New York Drama Critics' Circle | Best American Play | Arthur Miller | Won | |
| Theatre World Award | Cameron Mitchell | Won | ||
| Pulitzer Prize | Drama | Arthur Miller | Won | |
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Tony Award | Best Actor in a Play | George C. Scott | Nominated |
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Won | |
| Drama Desk Award | Outstanding Revival | Won | ||
| Outstanding Actor in a Play | Dustin Hoffman | Won | ||
| Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play | John Malkovich | Won | ||
| David Huddleston | Nominated | |||
| Outer Critics Circle Award | Outstanding Revival | Won | ||
| Outstanding Debut Performance | John Malkovich | Won | ||
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result nothing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | Tony Awards | Best Revival of a Play | Won | |
| Best Actor in a Play | Brian Dennehy | Won | ||
| Best Featured Actor in a Play | Kevin Anderson | Nominated | ||
| Howard Witt | Nominated | |||
| Best Featured Actress in a Play | Elizabeth Franz | Won | ||
| Best Direction of a Play | Robert Falls | Won | ||
| Drama Desk Award | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Won | ||
| Outstanding Actor in a Play | Brian Dennehy | Won | ||
| Outstanding Actor in a Play | Kevin Anderson | Won | ||
| Howard Witt | Nominated | |||
| Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play | Elizabeth Franz | Nominated | ||
| Best Director of a Play | Robert Falls | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Music in a Play | Richard Woodbury | Nominated | ||
| Outer Critics Circle Award | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Actor in a Play | Brian Dennehy | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play | Kevin Anderson | Won | ||
| Outstanding Actress in a Play | Elizabeth Franz | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Director of a Play | Robert Falls | Nominated | ||
| Drama League Award | Distinguished Production of a Revival | Won | ||
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Critics' Circle Theatre Award[37] | Best Actress | Sharon D. Clarke | Won |
| Evening Standard Theatre Award[38][39] | Best Actor | Wendell Pierce | Nominated | |
| Best Director | Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell | Nominated | ||
| 2020 | Laurence Olivier Award[40] | Best Revival | Nominated | |
| Best Actor | Wendell Pierce | Nominated | ||
| Best Actress | Sharon D. Clarke | Won | ||
| Best Actor in a Supporting Role | Arinzé Kene | Nominated | ||
| Best Director | Marianne Elliott and Miranda Cromwell | Won | ||
| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Tony Awards | Best Actor in a Play | Wendell Pierce | Nominated |
| Best Lighting Design of a Play | Jen Schriever | Nominated | ||
| Drama Desk Awards[41] | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Direction of a Play | Miranda Cromwell | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play | Sharon D. Clarke | Nominated | ||
| Wendell Pierce | Nominated | |||
| Drama League Awards[42] | Distinguished Performance Award | Sharon D. Clarke | Nominated | |
| Outer Critics Circle Award[43] | Outstanding Revival of a Play (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Nominated | ||
| Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Play | Sharon D. Clarke | Nominated | ||
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