Over the ensuing weeks, Eddie notices that Rodolpho is spending more and more time with Catherine, and begins to feel jealous. He sings a jazz song for the family's entertainment that night. He has no family to support and wants to stay in America indefinitely as a musician. His younger brother, Rodolpho, however, seems like a bit of a loose cannon. Quiet and hardworking, Marco mentions that he has a wife and three children at home that he will be sending money to. Rudolpho and Marco arrive the next day, thanking the Carbones heartily for their hospitality. Over dinner, Eddie tells Beatrice that her Cousins Rodolpho and Marco will be arriving the next morning from Italy they will work illegally in America, sending money back home to Italy, and while they do so, will stay with Eddie, Beatrice, and Catherine. Eddie later takes her to task for being flirtatious. He demonstrates these feelings early: as he arrives home from his work at the docks, accompanied by two fellow longshoremen, Catherine leans out the window and greets the men.

Eddie's pronounced concern for Catherine's propriety masks a sexual infatuation with Catherine that will become pivotal over the course of the play. Eddie lives with his wife, Beatrice, and her orphaned niece, Catherine, whom they have taken in. Act 1: The play opens as lawyer Alfieri addresses the audience he begins to narrate the story of Eddie Carbone. The amount of scholarship that has been written on the play is extensive. Though initially unsuccessful, it has risen to become part of the American dramatic canon. A View from the Bridge is one of the most acclaimed of American plays, by one of America's most acclaimed playwrights. Their arrival sets in motion a chain of events that leads, unexpectedly, to Eddie's dramatic undoing. Told in two acts, Arthur Miller’s play A View from the Bridge (1955) tells the story of Eddie Carbone, an Italian American Longshoreman whose household is upended by the arrival of his wife's cousins from Italy.

A view from the bridge