Forging a Usable Past: Brian Friel's Making History

• Published in: ELH Vol. 86; no. 4; pp. 1089 - 1123
• Main Author: Richtarik, Marilynn
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.12.2019
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Audiences; Biographies; British & Irish literature; Critics; Cultural factors; Drama; Dramatists; Exegesis & hermeneutics; Folklore; Friel, Brian; Heroism & heroes; Hume, David (1711-1776); Intersectionality; Irish literature; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Literary influences; Literary translation; Logic; Narrative techniques; Plot (Narrative); Politics; Rea, Stephen; Reception (Artistic works); Speculative fiction; Theater; Writers; Yeats, William Butler (1865-1939); United Kingdom > UK; Northern Ireland; Ireland
• ISSN: 0013-8304; 1080-6547; 1080-6547
• DOI: 10.1353/elh.2019.0040

Immediately hailed as a national classic, Translations was soon claimed as a seminal work of postcolonial literature as well, and Field Day, a critical as well as an artistic enterprise, proceeded to set the agenda for cultural discussion in Ireland for more than a decade, attracting both fervent support and fierce criticism.1 Making History, Friel's last script for Field Day, premiered on 20 September 1988. "2 Among the dignitaries assembled that night in September were two Derry natives integral to the peace process already tentatively underway.3 One, Friel's friend John Hume, was a member of both the British and European parliaments and would be a principal architect of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended three decades of violence in Northern Ireland. "6 Aidan O'Malley, who examines the play in the context of a comprehensive study of the Field Day project, seems to endorse such analysis but acknowledges, in a note, that "transcripts of … brief interviews with audience members after the first performances of the play in the North … would tend to dispute the dominant critical view of the play, as the audiences show a great appreciation of the complexities of the drama," with most seeing it "as a salutary act of historical demythologising" and reflecting on "its connections with the 'Troubles. "12 Field Day, for him, offered a way to channel both his own and other artists' efforts toward that end. Because Ireland is a small place, and one where literature is valued as an expression of national consciousness, a writer like Friel could, without grandiosity, aspire to that kind of cultural influence.