Harley Granville-Barker

Harley Granville-Barker 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).

Granville-Barker, Harley (1877–1946), became director at the Royal Court Theatre, producing Shakespeare, many classics, the work of modern dramatists, and his own The Voysey Inheritance (1905), and above all establishing the reputation of G. B. Shaw. At the Savoy he produced in 1910 his The Madras House and in 1912 two productions, The Winter's Tale and Twelfth Night, which revolutionized the presentation of Shakespeare. An apron stage, simple settings, an authentic text, and swift continuity of action were new to critics and public. Barker produced five series of Prefaces (1927–47) covering twelve of Shakespeare's plays. These studies broke new ground in presenting the producer's rather than the scholar's point of view. Among much other writing, lectures, and broadcasts he published On Dramatic Method (1931), On Poetry in Drama (1937), and The Use of Drama (1946).

Granville-Barker, Harley (1877–1946), English theatre scholar, actor, director, and playwright, one of the outstanding figures of the progressive theatre at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1891 he joined the stock company at Margate, and later toured with well-known actor-managers and was seen in London, notably in Poel's production of Richard II (1899). In 1900 Shaw chose him to play Marchbanks in the first London production, by the Stage Society, of Candida, and he appeared also in their productions of Captain Brassbound's Conversion (also 1900), Mrs Warren's Profession (1902), and Man and Superman (1905), in which his first wife Lillah McCarthy played Ann Whitefield. In 1904, with J. E. Vedrenne (1867–1930), he assumed the management of the Royal Court Theatre, where he embarked on an extensive programme of new plays, including his own The Voysey Inheritance (1905), in which the hero finds that the firm he has inherited achieved its wealth dishonestly; the social criticism, as in his other plays, is effectively made. An earlier play, The Marrying of Ann Leete (1901), had been successfully produced by the Stage Society, but their later production of Waste in 1907 fell foul of the Lord Chamberlain because it contained mention of an abortion, and the play was not licensed until 1936. His only other play of any importance was The Madras House (1910; NY, 1921). His experiences at the Royal Court, which had been artistically rather than financially rewarding, made him a fervent advocate of a subsidized theatre, for which he campaigned ceaselessly. His own approach to Shakespeare, whom he naturally considered the foundation stone of any British National Theatre, was conditioned by his early association with Poel, and his productions at the Savoy Theatre in 1912–14 of The Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night's Dream were later considered epoch-making in their simplicity and poetic beauty. Barker was at the height of his career in England when a visit to America directed his energies into fresh channels. Divorced from Lillah McCarthy, he married as his second wife the American Helen Huntingdon. At her instigation he gave up all contact with the theatre backstage, hyphenated his name, and settled down to translate, with her help, the plays of Martínez Sierra and the Álvarez Quintero brothers, and to write the Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927–47) on which his posthumous fame chiefly rests. The Marrying of Ann Leete was revived by the RSC in 1975, and The Madras House and The Voysey Inheritance were produced by the National Theatre in 1977 and 1989 respectively.