Granville-Barker, Harley

Granville-Barker, Harley, 1877–1946, English dramatist, actor, producer, and critic. As comanager of the Court Theatre from 1904 to 1907 he was an advocate and producer of "uncommercial" and experimental theater in his time. Granville-Barker was the chief producer of the plays of new dramatists as well as those of the great masters; he presented the works of Euripides, Shakespeare, Schnitzler, Shaw, and Galsworthy. His own realistic dramas, including The Voysey Inheritance (1905), Waste (1907), and The Madras House (1910), were not remarkable successes. After 1918, he devoted himself almost entirely to writing, lecturing, and scholarship, and achieved literary distinction with his Prefaces to Shakespeare (6 vol. 1927–46).

Bibliography

See biography by C. B. Purdom (1956, repr. 1971); study by D. Kennedy (1985).

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Granville-Barker, Harley

(born Nov. 25, 1877, London, Eng.—died Aug. 31, 1946, Paris, France) British producer, playwright, and critic. An actor from age 15, he directed his own first play, The Marrying of Ann Leete, in 1901. As comanager of the Court Theatre (1904–07) he produced many of George Bernard Shaw's early plays as well as plays by Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, and John Galsworthy, and also produced his own The Voysey Inheritance (1905) and Waste (1907). He influenced 20th-century theatre with his naturalistic stagings of Shakespeare's plays, which emphasized continuous action on an open stage and rapid, lightly stressed speech. He moved to Paris after World War I and there wrote Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927–46), a series of books of criticism.

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Granville-Barker, Harley 

Born Nov. 25, 1877, in London; died Aug. 31, 1946, in Paris. English playwright, historian, and theater figure. One of the leaders of the Court Theater (beginning in 1904).

Granville-Barker contributed to the establishment on the stage of the plays of Shaw and Ibsen. His theoretical works, which were aimed against escapist, philistine drama and affirmed the principles of critical realism, included A National Theater (1907, with W. Archer), The Exemplary Theater (1922), and On Dramatic Method (1931). Granville-Barker’s most important work was Prefaces to Shakespeare (vols. 1–5, 1927–49). His plays The Marrying of Anne Leite (1901). The Voysey Inheritance (1905). Waste (1907). The Madras House (1910). and The Ballot Vote (1917) are realistic, slice-of-life dramas.

WORKS

The Secret Life. London, 1923.
On Dramatic Method. New York. 1956.
Prefaces to Shakespeare, vols. 1–2. London [1958].
The Voysey Inheritance: A Play. [London, 1959.]

REFERENCE

Henderson, A. European Dramatists [5th ed.]. New York, 1926.

IU. I. KAGARLITSKII