author
Harley Granville-Barker
1877–1946
A restless force in modern theatre, this English dramatist and director helped reshape the stage in the early 20th century. He is remembered both for his own plays and for bold productions and writings that changed how Shakespeare and contemporary drama were understood.
3 Audiobooks
The Harlequinade: An Excursion
by Dion Clayton Calthrop, Harley Granville-Barker
Waste: A Tragedy, In Four Acts
by Harley Granville-Barker
Three Plays by Granville-Barker The Marrying of Ann Leete; The Voysey Inheritance; Waste
by Harley Granville-Barker
About the author
Born in London on 25 November 1877, Harley Granville-Barker began working in theatre while still very young and first made his name as an actor. He later became far more than a performer: a playwright, director, manager, critic, and theatre thinker whose influence reached across the Edwardian and interwar stage.
He was closely associated with new drama in Britain and worked with George Bernard Shaw, appearing in Shaw's plays before turning more fully toward directing and management. His seasons at the Court Theatre became especially important for promoting serious, adventurous drama, and his own plays took on complicated social and moral questions with unusual directness.
Granville-Barker also became one of the most respected Shakespeare commentators of his time. Alongside his practical work in the theatre, his criticism and production ideas helped shape 20th-century stagecraft and the modern understanding of how Shakespeare could be performed. He died in Paris on 31 August 1946.