Why is it called "A View from the Bridge?"

[gcontini2]

Posted: 1/23/10 at 2:25pm

I know this sounds like a dumb question, but I've always wondered: if the setting in the play takes place in Redhook in Brooklyn, to which bridge does the title refer?
It's not like the Redhook of today is close enough to the Brooklyn Bridge to be seen by someone on the bridge...
Thoughts?

[Kad]

Posted: 1/23/10 at 3:26pm

The bridge of the title has little to do with a physical New York bridge. Miller wrote this play to be more about the greater context, and one of Alfieri's purposes as a character is to do this. It's a view of the greater picture, like the panorama of New York as seen from the Brooklyn bridge, the nearest vantage point to Redhook.

[gcontini2]

Posted: 1/23/10 at 5:02pm

So, then Alfieri is the "bridge" and the story is his?
Seems somewhat reasonable, but not very satisfying. It's such very a specific title to draw attention and only amount to "one man's view"...?

[Kad]

Posted: 1/23/10 at 5:18pm

The one man's view is actually Miller's. Alfieri is almost an author stand-in, in an attempt to get the audience to get the context and broader implications and social messages. The actual meaning of the title is conjecture, of course, since Miller never came out and said what it meant. But based on what we do know, it's a logical conclusion. Miller wrote the play in an attempt to replicate Greek tragedies, whose purpose was to drive a social theme first and foremost.

[singtopher]

Posted: 1/24/10 at 8:54am

When I was in college, I believe we discussed the title to mean the title meant the view of Manhattan from the Brooklyn side of the BK bridge. Manhattan represents success of the American dream that the characters in the play never get to achieve.

[daredevil]

Posted: 1/24/10 at 12:41pm

A View From the Bridge, the story of longshoreman Eddie Carbone, his niece, Catherine, and their problems, was originally a long one act play, presented on the same bill as another one act play by Miller called, A Memory of Two Mondays. The two one acts opened on Broadway in 1955. A Memory of Two Mondays took place in a wearhouse in Manhattan, and A View From the Bridge, in Red Hook. Hence the title for the full eveing, A View From the Bridge, because the plays represented both Manhattan and Brooklyn; the playwright was looking at both boroughs from the bridge.
The Broadway run was not a long or successful one, but when the play was done in London, Miller dropped the first play, and expanded View to its current length. After that the play had a sort of "underground" reputation, I saw it performed in a college in Baltimore in 1963. A successful movie of it was made in 1962, with Raf Vallone, Maureen Stapleton, and Carol Lawrence, but it was the off Broadway revival in 1965, which starred Robert Duvall as Eddie, and also had Susan Anspach as Catherine, and Jon Voight as Rodolpho, that put the play on the map as an important one.
A Memory of Two Mondays has had a few revivals since its opening, but not many.