Granville-Barker, Harley

Granville-Barker, Harley (1877-1946), English author, actor, and producer, who was instrumental in bringing 20th-century ideas and concerns, such as social criticism, to the English stage. Born in London and privately educated, he began his career as an actor at the age of 13. After touring for several years, he appeared in London in 1892 and quickly won acclaim. In 1900 he created the part of Marchbanks in Candida, the first of his many roles in the plays of George Bernard Shaw. Also a playwright, Granville-Barker wrote The Marrying of Anne Leete (1901), The Voysey Inheritance (1905), Waste (1907), and The Madras House (1910), among others. These works, like Shaw's, were realistic criticisms of society rather than conventional entertainment.

As manager (1904-1907) of London's Royal Court Theatre, Granville-Barker directed and acted in plays—his own, Shaw's, and those of European contemporaries. He staged (1913-1914) simple but effective Shakespearean productions at the Savoy Theatre. In 1915 he took a company to New York. In 1930 he lectured at Cambridge and in 1937 at Oxford. Granville-Barker directed the British Institute of the University of Paris from 1937 to 1939 and taught at Yale (1940) and Harvard (1941-1943). During these years he wrote Prefaces to Shakespeare (6 vols., 1927-1946), in which he considered the plays from the viewpoint of a practical stage director.