Waiting for Godot (1952) is the masterpiece of the absurdist playwright Samuel Beckett, to whose works Friel's are frequently compared.

The Glass Menagerie (1944) by Tennessee Williams is a "memory play" to which Dancing at Lughnasa has often been compared. A man narrates the play as a memory of his mother, sister, and father who has abandoned them, addressing the audience directly, as in Friel's play. The lines, "I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion," and "In memory everything seems to happen to music," echo similar sentiments as expressed in Friel's play.

Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964) was Friel's first commercially and critically successful stage play. It is about the thoughts of a young Irish man about to emigrate to America.

Friel's A ristocrats (1979) is about an aristocratic Irish Catholic family on the verge of decline. In 1989 this play won...