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Kitishat A.,
Associate professor of English Literature Department of English Language and Literature, Al Balqa Applied University. Ajloun-Jordan E-mail: [email protected]
TITLE: THE TREATMENT OF HISTORY IN FRIEL'S PLAYS: HISTORY AS A DYNAMIC REALITY
Abstract. A major distinctive feature of Friel's dramatic works is his attitude toward history. The study aims to reveal how Friel employs history as the causal reactions related to self-realization. the study aims to high light Friel's vision of history as symbolic ritual action of self- discovery. In other words, the recurrent reference to the Irish history and culture is represented in rituals by which Friel developed his interest in the Irish past and history as interconnected dynamic process. The researcher aims to unveil Friel's vision of history, for his plays cannot separate the past historical sense from its present context. Also, both past and present are interrelated and dependent on each other. The researcher presents a detailed investigation of Friel's Faith Healer (1979) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). The study concludes that Friel sees history as a continuous dynamic process by which the present, not the past, imposes its power on the history by selecting specific and reprehensive past moments; to avoid the mistakes of the past to create a better future.
Keywords: Brian Friel, Faith Healer, Irish Drama, Historicism, Literary History.
Introduction [22, 204]). To clarify the meaning of the "dynamic"
Friel is believed to be among the pioneers who historical sense, Friel used multiple dramatic forms
employ their drama to illuminate the historical sense to provide his plays with a distinctive new histori-
by focussing on the interrelated relation between cal quality. These forms can be summed up in two
history and politics. primary forms: time and memory techniques, the
In this sense, Friel is seen as a successor ofYeats; historical method. for he revealed an interest in the Irish past and dealt A Historical Background with history as the central theme in his plays. A fact Friel is seen a reformist of the earlier Irish drama-
that can be seen in many of his plays especially Faith tists who employed historical as mere the traditions
Healer (1979) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). Friel of the past. Friel states that his theatre "enunciates
has always been referred to as an innovator of the the interpretation of Irish history that all its chang-
modern Irish theatre. A fact which is clarified with ing circumstances reiterate and inveterate pattern of
his using of history as symbolic ritual action. That is conflict: Catholic/ Protestant [...] English/ Irish"
the recurrent reference to the Irish history and cul- (Maxwell [8, 4]). No doubt then, this complicated
ture in Friel's works are represented in rituals as "if vision of history made Irish theatre. Such a reality
nothing can change" and if this proved to be right, presented itself so powerfully on the Abbey stage
then "nothing can die." The work of history is mani- as seen in Yeats' works and many years later Field
fested in its "inner logic" which is always "subverted Day stage as represented in Friel's works. However,
in Friel by the workings of the force that torments though both Yeats and Friel are similar in their adop-
[...] his characters - the force of chance" (O'Toole tion of history as the main subject for their plays,
nevertheless there is a slight difference between them. While Yeats was optimistic in his vision of the Irish past and referred to it as a source for his inspiration, Friel deals more pessimistically with the Irish past. Binnie in "Brecht and Friel: Some Irish Parallels." elucidates this pessimistic attitude of Irish history as:
Friel presents the resultant loss of Irish self-confidence in socio-linguistic terms- briefly, language creates history, a people who do not keep faith with the historical names of their location lose their identity; a people without a sense of their history become vulnerable for take-over. Vagueness about the past leads from a loss of self-confidence either to hopelessness or to violent crisis [9, 369].
As a result, history is an essential pillar in forming one's identity. Ignorance of one's history indicated a lack of self-confidence in one's identity. Enough, Friel sees people's indulgence in their past as indicative of a problem in the present which is related to a sense ofloss about one's national identity. This is what Friel considers a juxtaposition of reality, where reality is exposed to the political and historical myths. The reality in this sense is rejected by Friel who considers it a "fault," which lies with the individual who clings to myths and dreams discarded by history" O'Toole [22, 210].
The Narrative Techniques
The Monologue Technique
Friel handles the issue of history with an emphasis on the temporal dimension of time; this is achieved by the unique variations of the narrative techniques. Unlike the dramatists of his age who depended heavily on dialogue to display action, Friel was exceptional since he uses the technique of the monologue to express the duration of action. Regarding this technique, Thomas Kilroy in "Theatrical Text" defines the dramatic monologue as "a product of shared consciousness between the speaker and the reader and the hiding Ventrilo quail poet. In the theatre, persuasion must come not only through the voice but also through the scene" [11, 101].
Moreover, this technique is presented so magnificently in Faith Healer (1979), which is mainly composed as a series of monologues. The play presents the life of Frank, Faith Healer, through the medium of monologue. The history of the family is reported through four monologues: the first by Frank himself, though later discovered to be dead, Grace, his wife, reporting her version of Frank's life with suspicion of her identity if she is his wife or mistress. A third monologue is reported by Teddy, Frank's friend and finally the last account of Frank's business manager monologue. What is attracting here is that each character gives his / her account of history from his perspective or "version" of what is essentially the same story" (Andrews [2, 45]).
In this play, Friel adopts the monologue technique in a story framework. The mixture of the monologue with the story is useful in giving various versions of the same historical incident. Concerning this use of both story and monologue, Krause states:
It is a 'story' more 'than a drama because Friel made the crucial decision to narrate rather than dramatize his premise and its unfolding; he allowed his three characters to offer a series of separate if sometimes overlapping, monologues about failed lives. They never talk to each other; they narrate to emote their hopes and fears to the voyeuristic audience... the conflicting voices create the suspense of powerful but limited speeches as in a radio-play (Krause [17, 361]).
Making the story as a starting point for his dramaturgy, Friel is considered to introduce a 'romantic vision.' This aspect is like the dream -play technique, or as a "hidden story" within the play which has a function to "transform the stage as 'public exhibition area into the stage as private and sacred area' I see this secret play, however, like a dream play, a Yeatsian rearrangement" (Deane [6, 168]).
As mentioned above the notion 'dream play' presents, as Heaney states, an "authenticity of the transition from narrative presentation to reverie and narcotic dream-life" [6, 235]. This technique is
seen in its best manifestation in Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, a dream-like situation in which Michael remembers certain incidents in his childhood when his mother joined his aunts in their dance celebrating the festival of Lughnasa. Heaney comments on Michael's "entrancement" because they express his "response to the evidence." At the end of Lughnasa, the fiction of transition into the eternal world of dances of memory itself is acceptable precisely because it has been demonstrated to be a personal truth" (Heaney [11, 239]).
The frequent use of monologue as a technique is to reveal the conflicts, fears, aspirations of character. This technique is used in Lughnasa through Michael's character. He is presented alone at a distance from the other characters. The monologue is produced in a way different from the traditional ways. There is an inner and outer movement that accompany the presentation of Michael's monologue; for instance, Kramer in "Dancing at Lughnasa: Unex-cused Absence" comments on this technique by drawing the attention to the fact that Michael's offering of his introductory monologue while his family was presented in "silent tableau[.]In each tableau, the characters are divided into two groups, one inside the house and the other outside in the garden. those trapped in the house. serves as a shorthand dramatization of their lives" (Kramer [12, 172]).
Besides, the moment Michael presents his monologue; the action is "frozen" to indicate the shift in time. When he finishes his monologue, others move. Friel elucidates this technique in the beginning in the stage directions:
When the play opens, Michael is standing downstage left in a pool of light. The rest of the stage is in darkness. Immediately Michael begins speaking, slowly bring up lights on the rest of the stage. Around the stage and at a distance from Michael the other characters stand motionless in formal tableau [...] they hold these positions while Michael talks to the audience (Friel Dancing at Lughnasa, 1).
The purpose of using the monologue in such a way seems more than a narrative technique; it is rather used as a historical "distancing device" in which the audience is confirmed that the events are seen in Michael's memory many years later after the death of most of the characters. Joining the dramatic monologue with the "recorded memory," Friel's intention to render the ambiguities of "recorded" memory to reveal itself (Kramer [12, 173]). In other words, using the dramatic monologue, "the narrator in Lugh-nasa is a developing character who experiences a degree of enlightenment and attempts to present what he considers causes and effects of the family breakup" (Kramer [12, 176]). Also, in Faith Healer, on the other hand, Friel makes Frank and Grace, who are dead, narrate their stories. However; we do not discover the death of Frank and Grace until the end when Frank's manager delivers his monologue. Friel's" recreating" the lives of characters who are already dead is seen as a "risky" task:
The central character in Faith Healer is dead when the play opens. This is just the first and most daring risk the playwright takes. Dead men proverbially tell no tale in such a way as to make the audience share in his sense of fate. Compounding the problem, Grace, whose version of events usefully adjusts what we learn from Frank, is herself also dead, as we discover only at the end of Teddy's narrative (Murray [20, 87]).
Though the task is described as risky, yet Friel's handling of allowing the dead to narrate their previous life proved to be an innovative dramatic technique. The tradition of the dead character in action on the stage is presented with the collaboration of other theatrical devices to indicate the original dimension of specific incidents in one's history as dynamic, not static. Even the dead characters can play a role in reporting their history. Moreover, Friel manipulated the shift from one historical period by applying the lightning technique to make the audience realize this shift from a certain specific event in the present time to another past finished time; which will consequently lead to a shift in the historic intersection
between one's past and present and even future. In Faith Healer, in his stage direction, Friel writes "The Stage is in darkness [...] then out of this darkness comes Frank's incantation, "A berarder, A berayron'. At the end of the second line bring up lights very slowly, first around him and then gradually on the whole set" (Friel, Faith Healer [10, 331]).
In another part of the play Friel describes Frank as a shade, "his physical movements are just a shade sharper" (Faith Healer [10, 370]). Kiberd in "Brian Friel's, Faith Healer" (1985), remarks on Friel's use of light, he states that Frank "steps before us out of the darkness and into a ray of light at the beginning of the play, and recedes into the black at the end" (Kiberd [14, 110]). Frank reported certain incidents when the audience is "holding their breath in the locality" waiting in the half-light." They were people poised between the certainty of darkness and the certainty of light, anxiously waiting to see what would happen to those audacious enough to attend the healer's meeting" (Kiberd [14, 112]). Therefore, Friel is so professional in his employment of the light technique; he uses the light to reflect character's present; while the past is seen in darkness. Again the relation is paradoxical in detailing any incident in any one's history, where the present intersects with the past. Still, it is at the same time independent from it. This is done to express that characters, who are dead according to our limited view of time or "history," supposed to be a past and over; yet the present has its power to summon them to come back again from the past to report their perspective of the history. In this line of thought, the past does not end by death; the past is still seen under the power of the present, no other way around; since it is the present situation only has the power to decide which incident is over or not. The present is the most crucial element in Friel's notion of history regardless it is related to mere individuals or even nations.
What is significant in Friel's handling of the issue of history is the fact that the characters' historical account of the same event "never interact directly
with one another" (Andrews [2, 5]). Friel used the monologue alone to give different narratives of the same historical event. Friel in this context shows genuineness in developing his historical perspective toward a more philosophic maturity. By updating the dramatic monologue within true scope, Friel secured his position as an innovator of the dramatic techniques. Andrews in The Fifth Province comments on Friel's original treatment of the dramatic monologue arguing that "Faith Healer is divided into four distinct parts. the representation follows a preordained plan: each character is freer to construct his or her version of the past" [2, 45]. This technique allows us to see the story from different perspectives and let us judge which narrative is the most authentic view of history. Unlike the fixed historical time either the past or the present, the narrative is not objective since it is reported from a specific point of time, which is not as reliable as if heard from different narratives taken throughout different historical phases. Besides, in Friel's play, each monologue adds new information to the story told from the previous monologues as if Friel allows the other characters to fill in the gaps that are left from the former version of the story.
The Historical Setting in Friel's plays
When Friel's works are considered, the recurrent reference to the historical setting is realized. Friel's plays deal with the Irish reality; thus, according to historicists most ofthe Irish writers share themes and values that are "discrete products ofparticular culture rather than trans historical manifestations of essentially universal. Friel's work can be studied using the new historicism theory of analyzing literary texts, the works of Friel will be regarded not only as" an embodiment of the 'spirit of the age' but as a particular representation shaped within a mixed culture" (Payne [23, 246]). This heterogeneity presented in the failed marriage between Frank, the Irish faith healer, and his English wife in Faith Healer. However, Friel's heterogeneity associates so violent and destructive consequences of this Anglo-Irish; for instance, the murder
of the English soldier by Maire's first lover; and the "murder" / death of Frank's and Grace's newborn baby. An association that enhances the impossibility of this "heterogeneous" solution of the Irish question, or, as the study argues it suggests a further implication that the Irish society is not ready for this step and so it is too early to think of it now. Regarding this point, such treatment of this historical enmity foretells the failure of the Anglo-Irish relations:
The union of these two people fails, condemning the weaker to continued isolation and eventual destruction, Friel's plays reveal, however, that Ireland has avoided such devastation precisely because their heterogeneity defines the Irish... Friel portrays an Irish identity that has survived despite its adoption of different traditions and integration of foreigners themselves (Boltwood, [4, 581]).
No doubt then, by pointing out to the "devastating" results of such marriages, Friel presents an implied warning for the people, "who fetishize their cultural purity and repulse all foreign influence" (Boltwood [4, 581]). More specifically, however, the relationship between the Irish and English characters is revealed as a form of "juxtaposition" that symbolizes "different aspects of the love-hate relationship between the Irish and the English" (Binnie [3, 368]).
Friel sees that the relationship between culture and history as necessary to "present the effects of Irish emotionalism in the face of the rationality of the more powerful and ponderous neighbor, England" (Binnie [3, 309]). Therefore, this fact explains why Friel presents a "historical incident as his starting point" (Binnie [3, 309]).
Concerning Friel's depiction of the historical material, Friel's plays are regarded as forms of "renovations of traditional historical narratives" that are related to a specific cultural text, that counterattacks "codification into any of the narrowly defined existing Irish identities" (Leitner [18, 496]).
Having the cultural context as a background for most of his plays, Friel stresses the interrelation between Irish Culture and the present political reality.
Friel is aware of the divisions that worked inside the Irish society and thus, he looks forward to having a cultural unity to achieve the national identity which can be described as a cultural rather than a political entity. Though he hints at an awareness of the failure of the political unity, yet he looks hopefully forward to a cultural one (Kitishat [16, 3]).
Here, Friel shows a tendency towards "a restoration of wholeness and spiritual regeneration," he believes in a "collective identity which is based on [...] composition" and this justifies their preoccupation with "the problem of completion of this cultural mosaic" (Achilles [1, 437-38]). In other words, by adopting the cultural "mosaic," it is believed both Yeats and Friel achieved an openness if compared with the narrowness of the traditional historical contexts. By doing so, they ensured the continuity of their philosophy regarding the Irish identity.
The Historical Temporal Techniques: Memory and Retrospection
In most of Friel's plays, time has a historical significance; this can be seen in his focus on the present "moment" and how it influences future. What is more dramatic is the view of time in Friel's' plays is the focus on "decisive moments of change, moments of revelation, moments of definitiveness" (Murray [21, 126]). Friel's plays exhibit a "special use of time"; it includes multiple variations " like a dead person, (in Faith Healer two dead persons) inhabits both the past and (theatrically) the present" (Murray [20, 84-85]). The characters are seen caught in the past, the characters' seeking refuge from the present to the past is an indicative of "defeat." The psychology of defeat is related to the character as a "victim" who lives in a "nostalgia," however, the character "fails to evolve a dramatic form capable of including and expressing the anticipation of new freedoms" (Andrews [2, 38]). This integration of the present with the past in its "invisible and visible" forms is seen as "to implicate the audience in the dissolution of realism." Consequently, it resulted into the "bringing together of past and present" (Murray [2, 86]).
As noted above, in describing the character's sense of time, Friel presents the so-called "Memory" play. Heaney for instance in "For Liberation: Brian Friel and The Use of Memory" defines this technique as: "akin to that readjustment and repossession of the ability to understand experience which Aristotle called Catharsis" [2, 229]. Therefore, memory is seen as "momentary release" from the uncertainties the characters have" (Heaney [11, 229]).
Memory technique can be replayed and re-enacted. It is always "passing but always re-constituting itself, like the flaw of our memories, like the act of theatre itself" (O'Toole [22, 214]). Another definition of memory is introduced by Martin who sees it as a narrative technique that reveals the discrepancy between reality and dream, past and present. This problematic situation made memory as a "metaphor for life, in this world, with its inescapable joy and pain" (Martin [19, 80]).
Friel's use of the memory technique is so identical since he selected critical moments in the hero's life which allowed him to shed light on his psychological situation. this technique enabled Friel to "impose" a "certain colouring of imagination" over the characters (Heaney [11, 231]). The value of such technique is a re-evaluation of the past, "either to retrieve or to reconstruct a past, sometimes to indulge and absolve the characters, sometimes to expose and judge them, but mostly in order to exercise judgment and absolution to the same time" (Heaney [11, 231]). Thus, memories can help to justify some multiple incidents that the audience could not comprehend fully.
Besides, Friel's Faith Healer introduces a different variation of the memory in reporting the same event that contradicts others' memories. Kiberd regards Friel's use of memory as "an eloquent apology for the distortions of memory" [13, 118]. Kiberd argues that without such distortions, the artist could "recast his memories into a pattern" (Kiberd [14, 118]). Similarly, in Dancing at Lughnasa, Friel selects a certain moment of Michael's memory and allows the
audience to share with him the restoring of these events:
Memory plays based upon recollections of[...] "wonderful" or awesome experiences in the past which are deflated or destroyed by the harsh realities of the present. This denial of expectations leads to somewhat predictable and stock resolutions for the characters who are all victims of circumstances beyond their control. These people look back with nostalgia, not anger, and for their mood ofhope and resignation. Friel gives them soft and self-pitying words that tend to sentimentalize the impossible yet curiously redemptive quest for those elusive moments (Krause [17, 360]).
Having such explanation in mind, Lughnasa exemplifies the memories of Michael who goes back to his childhood and remembers his aunts in their simple life of feeding the animals, knitting gloves, listening to the radio. It is simply about a memory of the happy time of the Lughnasa festival and his aunts "hysteric" dance. Such a moment comes back to Michael many years later as a man, and as Krause indicates that it is this happy moment, "the memory of dancing [.] over-whelms Michael as he delivers his mesmerized curtain speech" [17, 373]. Toward the play's ending Friel presents Michael narrating his memory saying: "But there is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits me most often [.] when I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell" (Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa).
Another variation of the treatment of history is Friel's use of retrospect technique which emphasizes the authority of the remote past. Before exemplifying retrospect technique, it is necessary to give a short account of what the notion of retrospect means. For instance, Kiberd introduces a simplified definition as choosing a "remote historical event to throw an oblique light on the present" (Kiberd [13, 614]). Corcoran presents a comprehensive definition, he explains that people and "communities are caught up into an entanglement in their past, which
is an entanglements in remained, or invented origins and sources" (Corcoran [5, 15]). For Corcoran, the notion retrospect is a "kind of arc in which [.] the features of remembrance itself, of personal and cultural retrospect, from the staple focus of attention" (Corcoran [5, 15]). Obviously, not only the retrospect technique deals with "remembrance," but it also enhances a negative meaning associated with a sense of imprisonment or even a trap. To bring this subject into focus, retrospect should be incorporated about the dramatic structure "in which the past is brought into immediate contact with the present: to exert it, hold over it, or to return as the fantasy of repression" (Corcoran [5, 15]).
In the play, for instance, Frank is seen restoring the figure of his mother in law discussing the issue of obsession. What is interesting is that she asked him about his obsession, but he did not answer. No doubt then, this recollection of the dead mother is of a great significance since "it is the moment in Friel when the absent or silenced mother as the source of an alternative authority", and once again this interrelated connection between the past and the present is emphasized (Corcoran [5, 20]).
Another example of the retrospective technique is seen in Lughnasa, the use of the narrator as "a device for the suspension and conflation of time, the elegiac tone of notation, the use of a mentally disturbed young woman [...] whose sexuality takes a critical edge, the guilty departure of the narrator, the sense of a family trapped [.] in an increasingly hostile world" (O'Toole [22, 209]). Early at the beginning of the play, even before our acknowledgement of Michael's leaving his family, his aunt, Chris inquires about his absence, Kramer attributes retrospect in this situation as "a leitmotif of guilt, Michael's self-reminder that he was metaphorically absent from the life of his mother, though duty would say "there's work to be done" (Kramer [12, 179]). In other words, we can see Michael's guilty confession through the retrospective technique. However, in Translations, Friel also adopts this technique con-
cerning the issue of the contemporary Irish language; language became "transparent to or retrospective on its Gaelic past" (Corcoran [5, 26-7]).
To conclude, retrospection is mainly associated with regret, a sense of guilt, or repression because of a past event in the character's life.
In Faith Healer, retrospection is related to the nostalgia for the place, (for Ireland in particular) as a source of inspiration. Faith Healer presents history as a major power by presenting the moment which identifies Frank's "self-realization" at the end of the play. The play has an open ending, the researcher believes that Friel wants his characters to study their history, both the past and the present to evaluate the discovery of their real life. To sum up, one can create his own history, not to be imprisoned in the chains of the past.
Conclusion
Friel's plays present history as a dynamic reality; a vision that placed him as an essential innovator of contemporary Irish drama. His employment of history is characterized with his portrayal of different dimensions of history including time and place. In other words, the study proved that Friel was able to clarify his vision of history in which the present can select moments from the past that could help his characters play a significant role in the process of self-realization and evaluation of their identity.
It is in this light that the study concludes that Friel's greatness, may be acknowledged if seen with the unique treatment of the concept of history in its dynamic forms such as nostalgia and retrospection. In other words, by restaging selected incidents in the characters' lives, Friel innovates his dramatic techniques to express his vision ofhistory as a living interrelated reality that never dies.
Consequently, it is due to this fact; Friel has revived the historical tradition by presenting Irish topics so powerfully on the worldwide today theatre. Thus, Friel has succeeded in presenting the Irish drama into a universal scope. It is in this sense; Friel
regards history as continuity and reveals a deeper nomenon seeking openness to the global challenges understanding of the Irish identity as cultural phe- and international acceptance as well.
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