It is a two-act tragedy set in late 1940s Brooklyn told through a montage of memories, dreams, and arguments of the protagonist Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is despondent with his life and appears to be slipping into senility.

In 1999, New Yorker drama critic John Lahr said that with 11 million copies sold, it was "probably the most successful modern play ever published.

[2] Writing in a critical study of the play, author Brenda Murphy observed that Manny "lodged in his imagination and created a dramatic problem that he felt compelled to solve.

"[3] Miller later recounted that when he saw Manny at the theater, "I could see the grim hotel room behind him, the long trip up from New York in his little car, the hopeless hope of the day's business."

When visiting Manny as a youth, Miller felt "gangling and unhandsome" and usually heard "some kind of insinuation of my entire life's probable failure.

"[4] Seeing him again in Boston, Manny seemed to the playwright to be "so absurd, so completely isolated from the ordinary laws of gravity, so elaborate in his fantastic inventions," yet so much in love with fame and fortune that "he possessed my imagination.

He also had new interest in the simultaneousness of the past and present that was evident at their meeting, as it was plain that he and his cousins were viewed by Manny as they were when they were adolescents, many years earlier.

Worried over Willy's rapidly declining state of mind and a recent near fatal car accident, his wife Linda suggests that he ask his boss, Howard, to allow him to work in his home city so he will no longer have to travel.

Despite Biff having a promising football career in high school with many scholarship offers, he failed in mathematics and was therefore unable to enter a university.

They discuss their father's mental degeneration, which they have witnessed in the form of his constant indecisiveness and daydreaming about the boys' high school years.

Willy then loses his temper and ends up getting fired when Howard tells him that he needs a long rest and is no longer allowed to represent the Wagner Company.

However, Willy was in the middle of an extramarital affair with a receptionist named Miss Francis when Biff arrived unexpectedly, and saw the half-dressed woman with him.

Rather than listen to what Biff actually says, Willy appears to believe his son has forgiven him and will follow in his footsteps, and after Linda goes upstairs to bed, lapses one final time into a hallucination, thinking he is talking to his long-dead wealthy brother Ben.

Linda and Happy stand in surprise after Willy’s funeral is sparsely attended only by his family, Charley, and Bernard (who does not speak during the scene).

He observed that the mental illness suffered by Loman was a "biochemical abnormality" that was "not the sort of tragic flaw that makes a classic play."

But he noted that "Willy's fate is supposed to be partly a result of his own moral failings, in particular the adulterous affair [...], he is haunted by the memory of his infidelity and by the fear that it ruined his son's life.

Drama critic John Gassner wrote that "the ecstatic reception accorded Death of Salesman has been reverberating for some time wherever there is an ear for theatre, and it is undoubtedly the best American play since A Streetcar Named Desire.

The Times criticized it, saying that "the strongest play of New York theatrical season should be transferred to London in the deadest week of the year."

The play starred Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, Mildred Dunnock as Linda, Arthur Kennedy as Biff, Howard Smith as Charley and Cameron Mitchell as Happy.

It won the Tony Award for Best Play, Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Arthur Kennedy), Best Scenic Design (Jo Mielziner), Producer (Dramatic), Author (Arthur Miller), and Director (Elia Kazan), as well as the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.

The title role was performed at the Playhouse Theatre (Perth) in March 1979 by Warren Mitchell under the direction of Stephen Barry.

"It was a performance that won him both an Evening Standard Award and an Olivier and was highly praised by Peter Hall (director), while Arthur Miller reportedly described the turn as one of the best interpretations of the part he had ever seen.

[19] The play ran from 24 October 2019 until 4 January 2020 at the Piccadilly Theatre in London, starring Sharon D. Clarke and Wendell Pierce.