Background
Harley Granville-Barker was born on November 25, 1877 in London, England.
(Among Shakespeare's plays, "Hamlet" is considered by many...)
Among Shakespeare's plays, "Hamlet" is considered by many his masterpiece. Among actors, the role of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is considered the jewel in the crown of a triumphant theatrical career. Now Kenneth Branagh plays the leading role and co-directs a brillant ensemble performance. Three generations of legendary leading actors, many of whom first assembled for the Oscar-winning film "Henry" V, gather here to perform the rarely heard complete version of the play. This clear, subtly nuanced, stunning dramatization, presented by The Renaissance Theatre Company in association with "Bbc" Broadcasting, features such luminaries as Sir John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Emma Thompson and Christopher Ravenscroft. It combines a full cast with stirring music and sound effects to bring this magnificent Shakespearen classic vividly to life. Revealing new riches with each listening, this production of "Hamlet" is an invaluable aid for students, teachers and all true lovers of Shakespeare -- a recording to be treasured for decades to come.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0435086480/?tag=2022091-20
( Granville Barker on Theatre brings together some of the...)
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, articles, 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. Granville Barker on Theatre makes available again these writings in which Barker dissects the state of theatre as he saw it, with coruscating critiques of the commercial system, the long run and censorship, the vitality of theatre outside Britain, and what he saw as the welcome renaissance of theatre in non-professional groups liberated from the profit motive. These writings show a master practitioner concerned with, above all, promoting a new type of drama; vital not only for its own sake but for the sake of the health of society at large.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1474294847/?tag=2022091-20
Actor critic director manager playwright theorist
Harley Granville-Barker was born on November 25, 1877 in London, England.
He was trained from the age of 15 in the intellectual theater of Ben Greet and the Elizabethan Stage Society.
Both from this experience and from his wide reading he acquired a broad culture and a fastidious taste, and he initiated the most influential theater experiment of the period in his management of the Court Theatre (1904 - 1907).
There, with his first wife he vitalized Shakespearean production and acting, and gave Shaw and Galsworthy their first popular success in the theater.
The meticulously artistic staging which he practiced there has rarely been surpassed. His Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927 - 1945) represent a notable achievement in Shakespearean interpretation and scholarship.
He returned to Paris in 1946. A selection of his letters was published in 1986 as Granville Barker and His Correspondents.
( Granville Barker on Theatre brings together some of the...)
(Among Shakespeare's plays, "Hamlet" is considered by many...)
In 1906, Granville-Barker met his first wife Lillah McCarthy while playing her opposite in Man and Superman.
After World War I, he divorced his first wife and married an American writer named Helen Huntington.