Journal of Dramatic Idea And Criticism

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A memory play is a play during which a lead character narrates the occasions of the play, that are drawn from the character's memory. The time period was coined by playwright Tennessee Williams, describing his work The Glass Menagerie. In a widening of the definition, it has been argued that Harold Pinter's plays Previous Occasions, No Man's Land and Betrayal are memory plays, where "memory turns into a weapon". Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa is a late twentieth-century example of the genre. The scene is memory and is therefore non-life like. Memory takes quite a lot of poetic license. It omits some particulars