Death of A SalesmanSCRIPT.docx

1、Death of A SalesmanSCRIPTDEATH OF A SALESMAN(1949)Arthur Miller (1915- )Arthur Miller was born in the Harlem district of New York. His father was a Jewish clothing manufacturer who was to lose all his business in 1929 during the Depression. In the same year the family moved to a small house in Brook

2、lyn. After leaving high school, Miller started a series of jobsas a truck driver, a crewman on a tanker, as a waiter and in an auto-parts warehouse at a wage of 15 dollars a week, from which he saved money for college. In 1938 he graduated from the University of Michigan as a journalism major. He wo

3、n several prizes for drama when he was a student in the University. Six years later he had his first Broadway production The Man Who Had All the Luck, but closed after four days.By the time his first commercial success, All My Sons (1947) was produced, he had already written eight or nine plays. In

4、1949 he won a Pulitzer prize with Death of a Salesman and achieved an international reputation. Among his further works are an adaptation of Ibsens Enemy of the People and The Crucible, both containing political implications, the latter of which is actually a thinly veiled indictment of the fanatic

5、McCarthyism in the US in the early 1950s, After the Fall, Incident at Vichy, and The Price. He has also published a number of books of non-fiction accompanied by his wife Inge Moraths photographs: In Russia, In the Country, Chinese Encounters and Salesman in Beijing, the last of which was based on h

6、is experience in rehearsing Death of a Salesman with Beijing Peoples Art Theater in 1983.Of the American dramatists emergent since the end of the World War II, only Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller have been awarded respectful attention throughout the world. Critics early linked Miller with the

7、Ibsenite “problem play,” just like they did Williams with the Chekhovian “mood play,” but each of the two playwrights has subsequently achieved a versatility which calls such generalization into question. Steeped in the masterworks of world drama and working in a theater that accommodates both reali

8、sm and expressionism, each knows he must find for himself the organic fusion of form and content effective for getting across his own responses to American life.Arthur Millers latest works include:The Last Yankee (1991),The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991)The American Clock (1993) andBroken Glass (1994).

9、CHARACTERSWilly Loman Linda BiffHappyBernardThe Woman LettaCharleyUncle BenHoward WagnerJennyStanleyMiss ForsytheWaiterSceneThe action takes place in Willy Lomans house and yard and in various places he visits in the New York and Boston of today.ACT ONEA melody is heard played upon a flute. It is sm

10、all and fine, telling of grass and trees and the horizon. The curtain rises.Before us is the SALESMANS house. We are aware of towering, angular shapes behind it, surrounding it on all sides. Only the blue light of the sky falls upon the house and forestage; the surrounding area shows an angry glow o

11、f orange. As more light appears, we see a solid vault of apartment houses around the small, fragile-seeming home. An air of the dream clings to the place, a dream rising out of reality. The kitchen at centre seems actual enough, for there is a kitchen table with three chairs and a refrigerator. But

12、no other fixtures are seen. At the back of the kitchen there is a draped entrance, which leads to the living-room. To the right of the kitchen, on a level raised two feet, is a bedroom furnished only with a brass bedstead and a straight chair. On a shelf over the bed a silver athletic trophy stands.

13、 A window opens on to the apartment house at the side.Behind the kitchen, on a level raised six and a half feet, is the boys bedroom, at present barely visible. Two beds are dimly seen, and at the back of the room a dormer window. (This bedroom is above the unseen living-room.) At the left a stairwa

14、y curves up to it from the kitchen.The entire setting is wholly or, in some places, partially transparent. The roof-line of the house is one-dimensional; under and over it we see the apartment buildings. Before the house lies an apron, curving beyond the forestage into the orchestra. This forward ar

15、ea serves as the back yard as well as the locale of all Willys imaginings and of his city scenes. Whenever the action is in the present the actors observe the imaginary wall-lines, entering the house only through its door at the left. But in the scenes of the past these boundaries are broken, and ch

16、aracters enter or leave a room by stepping through a wall on to the forestage.From the right, WILLY LOMAN, the Salesman, enters, carrying two large sample cases. The flute plays on. He hears but is not aware of it. He is past sixty years of age, dressed quietly. Even as he crosses the stage to the d

17、oorway of the house, his exhaustion is apparent. He unlocks the door, comes into the kitchen, and thankfully lets his burden down, feeling the soreness of his palms. A word-sigh escapes his lipsit might be Oh, boy, oh, boy. He closes the door, then carries his cases out into the living-room, through

18、 the draped kitchen doorway. LINDA, his wife, has stirred in her bed at the right. She gets out and puts on a robe, listening. Most often jovial, she has developed an iron repression of her exceptions to WILLYS behaviourshe more than loves him, she admires him, as though his mercurial nature, his te

19、mper, his massive dreams and little cruelties, served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him, longings which she shares but lacks the temperament to utter and follow to their end.Linda hearing WILLY outside the bedroom, calls with some trepidation: Willy!Willy: Its all righ

20、t. I came back.Linda : Why? What happened? Slight pause. Did something happen, Willy?Willy: No, nothing happened.Linda : You didnt smash the car, did you?Willy With casual irritation: I said nothing happened. Didnt you hear me?Linda : Dont you feel well?Willy: Im tired to the death. The flute has fa

21、ded away. He sits on the bed beside her, a little numb. I couldnt make it. I just couldnt make it, Linda.Linda very carefully. delicately: Where were you all day? You look terrible.Willy: I got as far as a little above Yonkers. I stopped for a cup of coffee. Maybe it was the coffee.Linda : What?Will

22、y after a pause: I suddenly couldnt drive any more. The car kept going off on to the shoulder, yknow?Linda helpfully: Oh. Maybe it was the steering again. I dont think Angelo knows the Studebaker.Willy: No, its me, its me. Suddenly I realize Im goin sixty miles an hour and I dont remember the last f

23、ive minutes. Im I cant seem to keep my mind to it.Linda : Maybe its your glasses. You never went for your new glasses.Willy: No, I see everything. I came back ten miles an hour. It took me nearly four hours from Yonkers.Linda resigned: Well, youll just have to take a rest, Willy, you cant continue t

24、his way.Willy: I just got back from Florida.Linda : But you didnt rest your mind. Your mind is overactive, and the mind is what counts, dear.Willy: Ill start out in the morning. Maybe Ill feel better in the morning. She is taking off his shoes. These goddam arch supports are killing me.Linda : Take

25、an aspirin. Should I get you an aspirin? Itll soothe you.Willy with wonder: I was driving along, you understand? And I was fine. I was even observing the scenery. You can imagine, me looking at scenery, on the road every week of my life. But its so beautiful up there, Linda, the trees are so thick,

26、and the sun is warm. I opened the windshield and just let the warm air bathe over me. And then all of a sudden Im going off the road! Im tellin ya, I absolutely forgot I was driving. If Idve gone the other way over the white line I mightve killed somebody. So I went on again and five minutes later I

27、m dreamin again, and I nearly He presses two fingers against his eyes. I have such thoughts, I have such strange thoughts.Linda : Willy, dear. Talk to them again. Theres no reason why you cant work in New York.Willy: They dont need me in New York. Im the New England man. Im vital in New England.Lind

28、a : But youre sixty years old. They cant expect you to keep travelling every week.Willy: Ill have to send a wire to Portland. Im supposed to see Brown and Morrison tomorrow morning at ten oclock to show the line. Goddammit, I could sell them! He starts putting on his jacket.Linda taking the jacket f

29、rom him: Why dont you go down to the place tomorrow and tell Howard youve simply got to work in New York? Youre too accommodating, dear.Willy: If old man Wagner was alive Ida been in charge of New York now! That man was a prince, he was a masterful man. But that boy of his, that Howard, he dont appr

30、eciate. When I went north the first time, the Wagner Company didnt know where New England was!Linda : Why dont you tell those things to Howard, dear?Willy encouraged: I will, I definitely will. Is there any cheese?Linda : Ill make you a sandwich.Willy: No, go to sleep. Ill take some milk. Ill be up

31、right away. The boys in?Linda : Theyre sleeping. Happy took Biff on a date tonight.Willy interested: That so?Linda : It was so nice to see them shaving together, one behind the other, in the bathroom. And going out together. You notice? The whole house smells of shaving lotion.Willy: Figure it out.

32、Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and theres nobody to live in it.Linda : Well, dear, life is a casting off. Its always that way.Willy: No, no, some people some people accomplish something. Did Biff say anything after I went this morning?Linda : You shouldnt have criticized him, Willy, especially after he just got off the train. You mustnt lose your temper with him.Willy: When the he