The 10 essays in this book explore the themes developed by Miller in his plays and his career as a playwright.

Reviews and criticism of such Miller plays as Death of a Salesman, An Enemy of the People, The Crucible, and After the Fall are presented, as well as brief essays on his short stories.

The new essays in this collection, on such diverse writers as Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Maurine Dallas Watkins, Sophie Treadwell, and Washington Irving, fill an important conceptual gap. The essayists offer numerous approaches to intertextuality: the influence of the poetry of romanticism and Shakespeare and of histories and novels, ideological and political discourses on American playwrights, unlikely connections between such writers as Miller and Wilder, the problems of intertexts in translation, the evolution in historical and performance contexts of the same tale, and the relationships among feminism, the drama of the courtroom, and the drama of the stage. Intertextuality has been an under-explored area in studies of dramatic and performance texts. The innovative findings of these scholars testify to the continuing vitality of research in American drama and performance.

This collection of critical essays covers general topics related to the playwright's work as well as individual plays like Death of a Salesman.