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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Making History (play)

play by Brian Friel

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ16386857 ↗
Source-derived summary

Making History is a 1988 play written by Irish playwright Brian Friel, which premiered at the Guildhall, Derry on 20 September 1988. It focuses on the life and legacy of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who led a combined Irish-Spanish alliance against the English during the Nine Years' War. The play is set before and after the Battle of Kinsale. The battle does not directly feature in the play, although it is central to the plot.

The play's other main theme is O'Neill's unexpected third marriage to the much younger Anglo-Irish Protestant Mabel Bagenal, daughter and sister of two of his most implacable enemies, which the play presents as a genuine though ill-fated love marriage.

Characters

References

Further reading

Campbell, Patrick J. (1989). "Brian Friel's 'Making History'". Seanchas Ardmhacha: Journal of the Armagh Diocesan Historical Society. 13 (2): 291–293. ISSN 0488-0196.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Making History (play)” as play by Brian Friel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1988, 1989—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Making, History and play can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as play by Brian Friel. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16386857. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1988 and 1989.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Making History (play)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Making History (play) primary sources, Making History (play) archive and Making research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Making History (play)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Making History (play)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.