In the accents of ordinary speech, in the idiom of the mundane, the conventional, the everyday, Arthur Miller has pitted his not inconsequential talents as a playwright against the difficult, if not absolutely impossible, problem of fashioning a tragic hero out of the common clay of contemporary man. With Death of A Salesman many thought he had achieved that self-set goal and largely as a result of that play, having never really found a true success since, Miller attained something close to first rank status among American playwrights.

Arthur Miller is, in a certain sense, Henrik Ibsen warmed over for a contemporary audience. Like O'Neill, he would be a new Sophocles and like O'Neill he falls markedly short. There is too much of Ibsen in him—too much thundering, too much the pointed contemporary image, too much the topical issue. Though Miller's aseptic language has a bite that...