Brian Friel: The Liar as Artist

Price, Graham

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_2

Brian Friel: The Liar as Artist

Graham Price²

Chapter
First Online: 24 October 2018

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Abstract

This chapter examines the importance of Wilde’s plays and essays to Brian Friel’s works. Particular attention shall be paid to Philadelphia Here I Come! and Faith Healer, but the relevance of Wilde to Friel’s entire career shall be contended. Rewriting history, art overcoming life, and the power of lying are all Wildean preoccupations that Brian Friel adapts into a canvass upon which ethical art can be created in the contemporary moment in Ireland.

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Notes

1.
For an analysis of Brian Friel’s influential status within contemporary Irish drama, see Richard Pine, ‘Brian Friel and Contemporary Irish Drama’, Colby Quarterly, vol. 27 no. 4 (December 1991), pp. 190–201.
2.
Brian Friel, ‘Programme Note for Making History’, in Brian Friel: Essays Diaries and Interviews: 1964–1999, ed. Christopher Murray (London and New York: Faber and Faber, 1993) p. 135.
3.
See Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 1114.
4.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, p. 1121.
5.
Brian Friel, ‘Plays Peasant and Unpeasant’, in Brian Friel: Essays Diaries and Interviews: 1964–1999, ed. Christopher Murray (London and New York: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 51.
6.
Harold Bloom, Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1973, p. xxiii.
7.
See Daniel T O’Hara. ‘Prophetic Criticism: Oscar Wilde and His Postmodern Heirs’, Contemporary Literature, vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 1984), pp. 250–259, and Rodney Shewan, Oscar Wilde: Art and Egotism (London: Macmillan, 1977).
8.
For a thorough analysis of Friel’s usage of George Steiner’s After Babel in Translations, see Richard Pine, The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 1999), pp. 359–363.
9.
F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999), p. 19.
10.
Quoted in Marilyn Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics 1980–1984 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 137.
11.
Lawrence Danson, ‘Wilde as Critic and Theorist’, in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 90.
12.
F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics, pp. 13–48.
13.
Lawrence Danson, ‘Oscar Wilde, W.H., and the Unspoken Name of Love’, ELH, vol. 58, no. 4 (Winter, 1991), p. 980. While Danson’s article argues for the indeterminacy of Wilde’s essay primarily in terms of sexuality and sexual desire, I would argue that concepts of language and truthfulness are rendered equally unstable by the text.
14.
Seamus Deane, ‘Introduction’, in Brian Friel: Plays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 14–15.
15.
Richard Pine, The Thief of Reason: Oscar Wilde and Modern Ireland (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), p. 406.
16.
Ibid., p. 409.
17.
F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics, p. 69.
18.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 47.
19.
See Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations (New York: Schocker, 1969), p. 224.
20.
Richard Rankin Russell, Modernity, Community and Place in Brian Friel’s Drama (New York: Syracuse Press, 2014), p. 63.
21.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 397.
22.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, p. 417.
23.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (USA: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 59.
24.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies, p. 60.
25.
See Brian Friel, Philadelphia, Here I Come! Plays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 94–95. All future references are to this edition and will be included parenthetically in the text.
26.
Brian Friel, ‘Self Portrait’, in Brian Friel: Essays Diaries and Interviews: 1964–1999, ed. Christopher Murray (London and New York: Faber and Faber, 1993), p. 39.
27.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 1090.
28.
For an analysis of Friel’s usage of Wilde in Cass Maguire and Volunteer, see F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics, pp. 71, 134.
29.
Brian Friel, Volunteers (Meath: Gallery Press, 2002), p. 70.
30.
F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics, p. 134.
31.
Quoted in F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics, p. 173.
32.
Declan Kiberd, ‘Brian Friel’s Faith Healer’, in The Writer and Society at Large, ed. Masuru Sekine (Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1985), p. 108.
33.
Brian Friel, Faith Healer, Plays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), p. 333. All subsequent references are to this edition and are included parenthetically in the text.
34.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, p. 1078.
35.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, p. 1072.
36.
Anthony Roche, ‘The ‘Irish Play’ on the London Stage 1990–2004’, in Players and Pai nted Stage, ed. Christopher Fitz-Simon (Dublin: New Ireland, 1995), p. 139.
37.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Truth of Masks’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 1173.
38.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 362.
39.
Quoted in Declan Kiberd, ‘Oscar Wilde: The Resurgence of Lying’, in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 276.
40.
This story can be interpreted as a reversal of James Joyce’s essay ‘Ireland at the Bar’ in which two Irish-speaking men have to give an account of themselves to a purely English-speaking court. See James Joyce, ‘Ireland at the Bar’, in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 145–147.
41.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, p. 1078.
42.
See Walter Pater, Studies in the English Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2010).
43.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, p. 1072.
44.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, p. 1144.
45.
A fictitious character addressing her creator is a feature of Brian Friel’s 1966 play, The Loves of Cass Maguire, in which Cass takes issue on several occasions throughout the course of the drama with the title of the work as chosen by Friel. See Brian Friel, The Loves of Cass Maguire (Meath: Gallery Press, 1992), p. 23.
46.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, p. 1145.
47.
This misspelling of Frank’s name is similar to Leopold Bloom’s name being spelt as Leopold Boom in the ‘Eumaeus’ episode of Ulysses. See James Joyce, Ulysses (London: Penguin Classsics, 1992), p. 753.
48.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Critic as Artist’, p. 1145.
49.
Jeffrey Cohen and Todd Ramlow, ‘Pink Vector’s of Deleuze: Queer Theory and Inhumanism’, Rhizomes, no. 11/12 (Fall 2005/Spring 2006), par. 18.
50.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H.’, in Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 302.
51.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H.’, p. 308.
52.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H.’, p. 320.
53.
I am grateful to Frank McGuinness for suggesting this very fruitful comparison between ‘The Portrait of Mr. W.H.’ and Faith Healer.
54.
Patrick Burke, ‘Friel and Performance History’ , in The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, ed. Anthony Roche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 121.
55.
F.C. McGrath, Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics, p. 177.
56.
Quoted in Marilynn Richtarik, ‘The Field Day Theatre Company’, in The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, ed. Shaun Richards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 191–203. For an account of the aims, objectives, and productions of Field Day, see Marilynn Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics 1980–1984 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; Catholic University of America Press, 2001).
57.
See Richard Pine, ‘Love: Brian Friel’s “Give Me Your Answer, Do!”’ Irish University Review, vol. 29, no. 1 (1999), p. 176.
58.
Jose Lanters, ‘Brian Friel’s Uncertainty Principle’, Irish University Review, vol. 29, no. 1 (1999), p. 174.
59.
Brian Friel, Give Me Your Answer Do!, p. 49.
60.
See Thomas Kilroy, Double Cross (Meath: Gallery Press, 1994), p. 35, My Scandalous Life (Meath: Gallery Press, 2004) and The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (Meath: Gallery Press, 1997).
61.
Brian Friel, ‘Self Portrait’, p. 45.
62.
Seamus Deane, ‘Introduction’, p. 22.

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University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland
Graham Price

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Price, G. (2018). Brian Friel: The Liar as Artist. In: Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_2
Published: 24 October 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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