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