Three Short Plays: Rococo, Vote by Ballot, Farerwell to Theatre:

by Granville Barker

Overview

These plays are tempered with the thin, keen edge of Barker's fastidious intellectualism. "Rococo" deals farcically with a quarrel over a vase in the family of an English vicar. "Vote by Ballot" is a variation of the old tune of politics and a commentary on the problematical usefulness of the ballot. Mr. Torpenhouse's remark to his friend Lord Silverwall epitomizes Barker's feeling: "The same old tune . . . different words to it. It didn't really seem to me that it could hurt England at all to have you in Parliament." Later Mr. Torpenhouse proposes to move to abolish the ballot on the ground that it "compromises dignity and independence." "Farewell to the Theater" is a talk between Edward McLenegan and Dorothy Taverner set down in dramatic form. In this trifle, hardly a play, Barker is more the poet, or the symbolist, of "Souls on Fifth" than the dramatist. He is oppressed by the ephemeral quality of dramatic art. One leaves the theater having given one's best to it, only that others may come—that the blood of newer hearts may be mixed with the mortar of its walls.

–The American Review of Reviews, Volume 57 [1918]

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663512697
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	06/04/2020
Pages:	92
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.22(d)

About the Author

Granville Barker, later known as Harley Granville-Barker (25 November 1877 – 31 August 1946) was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist. 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. 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. 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.