Modernists: ‘No more but e’en a woman’

One strong feature of the modern period was a renewed interest in the drama and theatre practice of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and one of the great figures in this revival was Harley Granville-Barker. Granville-Barker sits astride the divisions and complications of this period in which the modern is struggling to be born out of the remains of the Victorian. Granville-Barker’s own plays show much of the tastes of the time but his talents and interests are shown to best advantage in his contribution to A Companion to Shakespeare (which he edited with G.B. Harrison) and in the Prefaces to Shakespeare (1927–45). In his discussion of Antony and Cleopatra, Harley Granville-Barker writes against Dr Johnson’s assertion that the events are narrated ‘without any art of connection or care of disposition’. His master trope contrasts music and architecture: • We should never, probably, think of Shakespeare as sitting down to construct a play as an architect must design a house, in the three dimensions of its building.