DEATH OF A SALESMAN SUMMARY

A melody is heard,played upon a flute. It is small 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 skyfalls upon the house and forestage; the surrounding area
shows an angry glow of orange. As more light appears, we see a solid vault of
apartment houses around the small,fragile-seeming home. An air of the dream
dings to the place,a dream rising out of reality. The kitchen at center seems
actual enough, for there is a kitchen table with three chairs and a
refrigerator.But 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. A window opens onto 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 stairway 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 area serves as the backyard 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 characters enter or leave a room by stepping through a wall onto
the forestage.
From the right, Willy Loman, the Salesman, enters, carrying two large sample
cases.The flutes 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 doorway of the
house, his exhaustion is apparent. He unlocks the door, comes into the
kitchen,and thankfully let his burden down, feeling the soreness of his palms.A
word-sigh escape his lips it might be Oh,boy, oh, boy. He closes the door ;
then carries his cases out into the living room,through the draped kitchen
doorway.

Lindas 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 behavior she more than loves him,she admires him, as
though his mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties,
served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him,
longings which she shares but lacks of temperament to utter and follow to their
end.

Willy Loman, an old salesman, returns early from a business trip. After nearly
crashing multiple times,Willi has a moment of enlightenment and realizes he
shouldnt be driving.Seeing that her husband is no longer able to do his job as a
travelling salesman, Willys wife, Linda, suggests that he ask his boss,Howard,
to give him a local office job at New York headquarters . Willy thinks that getting
the new job is a sure thing since he (wrongly) sees himself as a valuable
salesman.

We begin to learn some family background and hear about Willy and Lindas
grown sons, Biff and Happy.Biff has just returned home from working as a
farmhand in the West.Willy thinks Biff could easily be rich and successful, but is
wasting his talents and needs to get on track. Willy thinks Biff is being wish-
washy to spite him.

Last that night, Willy starts having flashbacks and talking to imagined images as
if they were real people .You guessed it; something is wrong. Hes ranting so
loudly that Happy and Biff wake up. The brothers are legitimately worried, as
they have never seen their father like this. Biff, feeling as though he should stay
close to home and fix his relationship with his dad, decides to talk to a former
employer, Billy Oliver, about getting a loan to start a business.
In the middle of the night, Willys talking to himself so loudly that everyone
wakes up. Linda admits to her sons that she and Willy are struggling financially.
Worse, Willy has been attempting suicide.Shes worried and takes it out on her
boys,accusing Biff of being the cause of Willys unhappiness.Now Willy gets in
on the family discussion and the situation goes downhill. He and Biff begin to
argue, but Happy interjects that Biff plans to see Oliver the following morning.
Willy is overjoyed. Everyone goes to sleep believing that tomorrow will fulfill
their dreams: Willy expects to get a local job, and Biff expects to get business
loan.

The next day, ofcourse, everything goes wrong. Willy feels happy and confident
as he meets with his boss, Howard. But instead of getting a transfer to the New
York, Willy gets fired.Destroyed by the news, he begins to hallucinate and, yes,
once again speak with imaginary people as he heads out to meet his sons at a
restaurant. Waiting for their dad at the restaurant Bigg explains to Happy that
Oliver wouldnt see him and didnt have the slightest idea who he was.
Distressed,spiteful,and something of a kleptomaniac,Biff stole Olivers fountain
pen.By now, Biff has realized that he was crazy to think he would ever get a
loan,and that he and his family have been lying to themselves for basically their
entire lives. When Willy comes into the restaurant demanding good news.Biff
struggles to explain what happened without letting his father down. Willy, who
cant handle the disappointment,tries to pretend it isnt true. He starts drifting
into the dreamy past again,reliving the moment when Biff discovered his
(Willys) affair with a woman in Boston. While their dad is busy being detached
from reality,Biff and Happy ditch him for two girls .

Biff and Happy returm home from their dates to find their mother waiting for
them, fuming mad that they left their father at the restaurant. A massive
argument erupts. No one wants to listen to Biff, but he manages to get the point
across that he cant live up to his dads unrealistic expectations and is basically
just a failure. Hes the only one who sees that theyve been living a lie, and he
tells them so.

The nights fight ends with Willy realizing that Biff, although a failure, seems to
really love him. Unfortunately Willy cant get past the failure bit. He thinks the
greatest contribution that he himself can make toward his sons success is to
commit suicide. That way, Biff could use the life insurance money to start a
business.

Within a few minutes, theres a loud crash. Willy has killed himself.

In the final scene, Linda, sobbing, still under the delusion that her husband was
a well-killed salesman, wonders why no one came to his funeral .Biff continues
to see through hus families lies and wants to be a better man who is honest with
himself. Unfortunately , Happy wants to be just like his dad.
 Shakespeare's Life
Since William Shakespeare lived more than 400 years ago, and many records
from that time are lost or never existed in the first place, we don't know
everything about his life. For example, we know that he was baptized in
Stratford-upon-Avon, 100 miles northwest of London, on April 26, 1564. But we
don't know his exact birthdate, which must have been a few days earlier.

We do know that Shakespeare's life revolved around two locations: Stratford

and London. He grew up, had a family, and bought property in Stratford, but he
worked in London, the center of English theater. As an actor, a playwright, and a
partner in a leading acting company, he became both prosperous and well-
known. Even without knowing everything about his life, fans of Shakespeare
have imagined and reimagined him according to their own tastes, just as we see
with the 19th-century portrait of Shakespeare wooing his wife at the top of this
page.

Birth and childhood

William Shakespeare was probably born on about April 23, 1564, the date that is
traditionally given for his birth. He was John and Mary Shakespeare's oldest
surviving child; their first two children, both girls, did not live beyond infancy.
Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had three younger brothers,
Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who died at
seven, and Joan.

Their father, John Shakespeare, was a leatherworker who specialized in the soft
white leather used for gloves and similar items. A prosperous businessman, he
married Mary Arden, of the prominent Arden family. John rose through local
offices in Stratford, becoming an alderman and eventually, when William was
five, the town bailiffmuch like a mayor. Not long after that, however, John
Shakespeare stepped back from public life; we don't know why.

Shakespeare, as the son of a leading Stratford citizen, almost certainly attended

Stratford's grammar school. Like all such schools, its curriculum consisted of an
intense emphasis on the Latin classics, including memorization, writing, and
acting classic Latin plays. Shakespeare most likely attended until about age 15.

Marriage and children

A few years after he left school, in late 1582, William Shakespeare married Anne
Hathaway. She was already expecting their first-born child, Susanna, which was
a fairly common situation at the time. When they married, Anne was 26 and
William was 18. Anne grew up just outside Stratford in the village of Shottery.
After marrying, she spent the rest of her life in Stratford.

In early 1585, the couple had twins, Judith and Hamnet, completing the family.
In the years ahead, Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare
worked in London, although we don't know when he moved there. Some later
observers have suggested that this separation, and the couple's relatively few
children, were signs of a strained marriage, but we do not know that, either.
Someone pursuing a theater career had no choice but to work in London, and
many branches of the Shakespeares had small families.

Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. His older
daughter Susanna later married a well-to-do Stratford doctor, John Hall. Their
daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare's first grandchild, was born in 1608. In 1616,
just months before his death, Shakespeare's daughter Judith married Thomas
Quiney, a Stratford vintner. The family subsequently died out, leaving no direct
descendants of Shakespeare.

For several years after Judith and Hamnet's arrival in 1585, nothing is known for
certain of Shakespeare's activities: how he earned a living, when he moved from
Stratford, or how he got his start in the theater.

Following this gap in the record, the first definite mention of Shakespeare is in
1592 as an established London actor and playwright, mocked by a
contemporary as a "Shake-scene." The same writer alludes to one of
Shakespeare's earliest history plays, Henry VI, Part 3, which must already have
been performed. The next year, in 1593, Shakespeare published a long poem,
Venus and Adonis. The first quarto editions of his early plays appeared in 1594.
For more than two decades, Shakespeare had multiple roles in the London
theater as an actor, playwright, and, in time, a business partner in a major
acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (renamed the King's Men in 1603).
Over the years, he became steadily more famous in the London theater world;
his name, which was not even listed on the

Final years

Shakespeare prospered financially from his partnership in the Lord

Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), as well as from his writing and acting.
He invested much of his wealth in real-estate purchases in Stratford and bought
the second-largest house in town, New Place, in 1597.
Among the last plays that Shakespeare worked on was The Two Noble Kinsmen,
which he wrote with a frequent collaborator, John Fletcher, most likely in 1613.
He died on April 23, 1616the traditional date of his birthday, though his
precise birthdate is unknown. We also do not know the cause of his death. His
brother-in-law had died a week earlier, which could imply infectious disease, but
Shakespeare's health may have had a longer decline.

The memorial bust of Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford is

considered one of two authentic likenesses, because it was approved by people
who knew him. (The bust in the Folger's Paster Reading Room, shown at left, is
a copy of this statue.) The other such likeness is the engraving by Martin
Droeshout in the 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, produced
seven years after his death by his friends and colleagues from the King's Men.