Trivia

A highly influential director of the plays of William Shakespeare.

In 1906, Granville-Barker met his first wife Lillah McCarthy on tour with Ben Greet's Shakespeare and Old English Touring Company in 1895 when he was 17. In Ben Greet's company, he played Paris to McCarthy's Juliet. McCarthy first appeared at The Court Theatre under Barker's co-management in "John Bull's Other Island" in 1895. Shortly thereafter, Barker played opposite McCarthy in Man and Superman (1895). They married on April 24, 1906 at the West Strand Registry Office.

He was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist.

Granville-Barker's most notable prose work is the Prefaces to Shakespeare written from 1927 to the end of his life in 1946. Prefaces to Shakespeare was considered the first major Shakespeare study to attend to the practical matters of staging. The prefaces were published in two hardback volumes in 1946 and 1947.

On the outbreak of the Second World War, Granville-Barker fled France for Spain before moving to the United States. In America he lectured at Harvard and was also employed by British Information Services.

As a writer his plays, which tackled difficult and controversial subject matter, met with a mixed reception during his lifetime but have continued to receive attention.

He left school at 14 and began a career in acting. As his career blossomed, he seemed to excel in roles that were a culmination of intelligence and romantic dreaminess. This landed him many roles such as; Tanner in Man and Superman, Cusins in Major Barbara, Marchbanks in Candida, and Dubedat in The Doctor's Dilemma. To be more specific the Dubedat and Cusins characters were written by George Bernard Shaw with Granville-Barker specifically in mind. However, performing no longer appealed to Granville-Barker so he gave it up in 1911.

After early success as an actor in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, he increasingly turned to directing and was a major figure in British theatre in the Edwardian and inter-war periods.

In 1905 Granville-Barker wrote The Voysey Inheritance which is considered to be a masterpiece of the Edwardian stage. His other plays, however. did not sit well with the Edwardian audience. They found his plays to be incomprehensible.

When settled in Paris he collaborated with Huntington on translating the comedies of Martínez Sierra and the Álvarez Quintero brothers.