Granville Barker on Theatre: Selected Essays

'Granville Barker on Theatre' brings together some of the most important critical theatrical writings of Harley Granville Barker, a major figure of 20th-century British theatre.

Known as a pioneer of the National Theatre and Repertory Movement, and remembered mainly for his Prefaces to Shakespeare, from the 1900s to his death in the 1940s Granville Barker commented enthusiastically in newspaper items, introductions to plays, articles, essays, and published lectures on a range of topics: the nature of theatre as an art form and as a social medium, the need for ensemble playing in a repertory system, the relationship between the three chief constituents of theatre - the actor, the playwright and the audience.