SOURCE: "Personal Devices: Two Representative Stories by Brian Friel," in Colby Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1996, pp. 93-9.

In the following study of "The Flower of Kiltymore," and "The Saucer of Larks," Bonaccorso considers Friel's more private story-telling voice.

Between 1964 and 1967, with the productions of Philadelphia, Here I Come! in Dublin, London, and New York, Brian Friel began to commit his talents fully to drama. This was about ten years into his public career as a writer of short stories and radio plays and following a half-year of study at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. In 1967, in an essay entitled "The Theatre of Hope and Despair," Friel makes a distinction between the strategies of the playwright and those of the storywriter, between engaging a collective audience and a solitary reader. In doing so he reveals a determination to maintain an artistic faith with himself that he had established in...