Arthur Miller (1915 - 2005) has been considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. His best known plays include 'All My Sons,' 'A View from the Bridge,' 'The Crucible' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning play 'Death of a Salesman.'

'Death of a Salesman' (1949) is a play about a middle aged man (Willy Loman) at the end of his emotional rope. He is trying to support a very dysfunctional family. Loman is the aging, failing salesman who specifically makes his living riding on a wide smile and a good shoeshine.

In the play, Arthur Miller has clearly defined the tragic hero (Loman) as a man whose dreams are at once untenable and dangerously insubstantial. He has given us a figure whose name has become a symbol for a kind of majestic grandiosity and a play that compresses epic extremes of humor and anguish, promise and loss, between the four walls of a standard American living room.

Because this play is considered one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, it has been revived on Broadway four times. In June 1975, at the Circle in the Square Theater, it ran for 71 performances. At the Broadhurst Theater in March 1984, the play provided 97 public performances. For a third time in February 1999, at the Eugene O'Neill Theater, around 274 performances were given. In February 2012, at the Ethel Barrymore Theater for a limited run of 16 weeks, the play made a fourth appearance on Broadway in New York City.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org