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Harley Granville Barker: the First English Chekhovian?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Abstract

Harley Granville Barker, the major innovator in the English theatre at the beginning of the present century, was long underestimated as a playwright, and misjudged as a mediocre imitator of Bernard Shaw. In more recent years major revivals of his plays, as well as new critical studies and editions, have witnessed a renewed interest in Barker as a dramatist, which, Rudolf Weiss here argues, testifies to the Chekhovian rather than the Shavian qualities of his plays. In the following article Weiss explores these qualities in the context of the early reception of Chekhov's plays in Britain, and on the basis of a reassessment of the existing records he offers a new view of Barker's originality as a playwright, concluding that the quasi-Chekhovian stamp of his work does not derive from influence but reflects the distinctive Zeitgeist of the turn of the twentieth century. Rudolf Weiss, who teaches in the English Department of the University of Vienna, has previously published on Arthur Wing Pinero, John Galsworthy, Harley Granville Barker, and Elizabeth Baker.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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References

Notes and References

1. Sam Walters in an interview with Kennedy, Dennis, ‘Being a Director is Like Being a Detective’, in McDonald, Jan and Hill, Leslie, eds., Harley Granville Barker: an Edinburgh Retrospective, 1992 (Glasgow: Theatre Studies Publications, 1993), p. 98Google Scholar.

2. Of his early major plays, Barker wrote The Marrying of Ann Leete in 1899 and The Voysey Inheritance from 1903 to 1905. See ‘A List of Writings’, compiled by May, Frederick and Morgan, Margery M., in Purdom, C. B., Harley Granville Barker: Man of the Theatre, Dramatist, and Scholar (London: Rockliff, 1955), p. 294Google Scholar.

3. The first English translations published in Britain were by Marian Fell (1912), George Calderon (1912), Julius West (1915, 1916), and Constance Garnett (1923, 1926, 1929). An early translation of a Chekhov play to come out in the United States was by Max S. Mandell (of The Cherry Garden, 1908). In some sources Isabel F. Hapgood is credited with a translation of The Seagull (1905); however, it appears that this is only a synopsis of 15 pages.

4. The Seagull, Glasgow Repertory Theatre, November 1909; The Bear, Kingsway, May 1911; The Cherry Orchard, Stage Society at the Aldwych, May 1911; The Seagull, Adelphi Play Society at the Little Theatre, March 1912; Uncle Vanya, Stage Society at the Aldwych, May 1914. See McDonald, Jan, ‘Productions of Chekhov's Plays in Britain before 1914’, Theatre Notebook, XXXIV, No. 1 (1980), p. 25Google Scholar. This article was reprinted in Miles, Patrick, ed., Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar under the title, ‘Chekhov, Naturalism, and the Drama of Dissent: Productions of Chekhov's Plays in Britain before 1914’, p. 29–42.

5. Laurence, Dan H., ed., Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1898–1910 (London: Reinhardt, 1972), p. 569Google Scholar.

6. Letter to Moore, George, undated [assigned to October 1911], in Laurence, Dan H., ed., Bernard Shaw: Collected Letters 1911–1925 (London: Reinhardt, 1985), p. 53Google Scholar.

7. , Hankin, ‘The Stage Society: the “Moscow School” of Drama’, Academy, LXXII (15 06 1907), p. 585Google Scholar.

8. Hankin, Academy, p. 585.

9. , Hankin, quoted in Whitebrook, Peter, William Archer: a Biography (London: Methuen, 1993), p. 280Google Scholar.

10. Peter Whitebrook, William Archer, p. 280. Constance Garnett's translation was used for the Stage Society production in 1911.

11. McDonald, Jan, The ‘New Drama’ 1900–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Morgan, Margery M., A Drama of Political Man: a Study in the Plays of Harley Granville Barker (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1961), p. 21Google Scholar.

13. For the dates of composition, see May and Morgan, ‘A List of Writings’, p. 294.

14. See Barker, Harley Granville, The Exemplary Theatre (London: Chatto and Windus, 1922), p. 140Google Scholar.

15. Barker, The Exemplary Theatre, p. 134.

16. Barker, Harley Granville, On Dramatic Method (New York: Hill and Wang, 1956), p. 186–7Google ScholarPubMed, reprint of edition published by Sidgwick and Jackson, 1931.

17. Letter to William Archer of 1 October 1923, in Salmon, Eric, ed., Granville Barker and His Correspondents: a Selection of Letters by Him and to Him (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986), p. 102Google Scholar.

18. See McDonald, Theatre Notebook, p. 28.

19. , Gaskill, quoted in Mazer, Cary M., ‘The Voysey Inheritance’, in Harley Granville Barker: an Edinburgh Retrospective, 1992, p. 61Google Scholar.

20. Cf. Mazer, ‘The Voysey Inheritance’, p. 61.

21. Salenius, Elmer W., Harley Granville Barker (Boston: Twayne, 1982), p. 109–10Google Scholar.

22. Peace, Richard, in Eekman, Thomas, ed., Critical Essays on Anton Chekhov (Boston: Hall, 1989), p. 127Google Scholar.

23. Morrice, Julie, ‘Character Witnesses’, in Scotland on Sunday Edinburgh International Festival Study Guide: Harley Granville Barker, 26 04 1992, p. 13Google Scholar.

24. Chekhov, Anton, Plays, trans. Fen, Elisaveta (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), p. 263Google Scholar. Subsequent quotations are from this edition.

25. Maurice Valency, The Breaking String: the Plays of Anton Chekhov (New York: Schocken, reprint 1983), p. 220. Beverly Hahn argues that it is not so much the likes of Natasha who pose a threat to civilization: ‘As civilized people surrounded by, and in some ways embodying, an almost defunct culture, the sisters make us aware of the dilemma … of cultured refinement working unconsciously towards its own defeat.’ See Hahn, Beverly, ‘Three Sisters’, in , René and Wellek, Nonna D., eds., Chekhov: New Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984), p. 145Google Scholar.

26. Gilman, Richard, Chekhov's Plays: an Opening into Eternity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 222Google Scholar.

27. Valency, The Breaking String, p. 270.

28. McDonald, The ‘Neiv Drama’, p. 56.

29. Kennedy, Dennis, ed., Plays by Harley Granville Barker (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 82Google Scholar. Subsequent quotations from The Marrying of Ann Leete and The Voysey Inheritance are from this edition.

30. McDonald, The ‘New Drama’, p. 62.

31. Barker, Harley Granville, The Madras House, ed. Morgan, Margery M. (London: Eyre Methuen, 1977), p. 131Google Scholar. Subsequent quotations from the play are from this edition.

32. Gilman, Chekhov's Plays, p. 179.

33. McDonald, The ‘New Drama’, p. 72.

34. Salmon, Eric, Granville Barker: a Secret Life (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 162Google Scholar.

35. McDonald, The ‘New Drama’, p. 99.

36. Kennedy, , Granville Barker and the Dream of Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 113Google Scholar.

37. ‘Cans of Worms’, Plays International, VIII, No. 2 (September 1992), p. 13.

38. Kennedy, Dennis, ‘Introduction’ to his edition of Plays by Harley Granville Barker (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 13Google Scholar.

39. Valency, The Breaking String, p. 297.

40. Gilman, Chekhov's Plays, p. 238.

41. Ibid., p. 241.

42. Gaskill quoted in Morrice, ‘Character Witnesses’,p. 13.