Brian Friel Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Seamus Deane

Critical Essay by Seamus Deane

SOURCE: "Brian Friel: The Double Stage," in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, 1880-1980, Faber and Faber, 1985, pp. 166-73.

In the essay below, Deane explores the functions of the "secret stories" that lie at the center of many of Friel's plays.

A closed community, a hidden story, a gifted outsider with an antic intelligence, a drastic revelation leading to violence—these are recurrent elements in a Brian Friel play. They are co-ordinated in the pursuit of one elusive theme, the link between authority and love. Most of the people in Friel's drama are experts in the maintenance of a persona, or of an illusion upon which the persona depends. But their expertise, which most often takes the form of eloquence and wit, and which is a mode of defence against the oppressions of false authority, has no power to alter reality. So they become articulators of a problem to...
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