British playwright / director Harley Granville-Barker was born in
London, England, in 1877. His schooling ended at age 13, when at the
urging of his mother he entered a dramatic school / stock company at
Margate. A year later he was performing on the London stage. He was
writing plays at a very young age, and in 1899 had his first play
produced on the London stage, "The Weather Hen". He soon joined the
Stage Society as an actor and producer. In 1901 his play "The Marrying
of Ann Leete" was produced on stage, to wide acclaim. In 1905 he became
co-manager of The Court Theatre, He began to stage plays by authors who
had a difficult time finding theaters that would showcase their works,
such as Henrik Ibsen and
George Bernard Shaw, and in fact
Barker himself performed the lead in many of the Shaw plays they
staged.
In 1907 he married
Lillah McCarthy, an actress who
had appeared in many of his productions, but they divorced in 1918. He
then married Helen Mancheseter Gates, an American poet and novelist who
later changed her professional name to
Helen Granville-Barker. He
decided to leave acting in 1910, but stayed in the theatrical business
as a producer until 1934.
Barker is best known as a producer and director of plays by 'William
Shakespare (I)', and in fact is considered by many Shakespeare devotees
as the most important director of Shakespeare's plays in British
theatrical history. He also translated the works of many foreign
playwrights--many of them Spanish--into English, and wrote several
scholarly books on drama and the theater.
He died in Paris, France, in August of 1946.
