The Secret Life

＂Burnt out...inside.＂

Joan, THE SECRET LIFE, ACT ONE, Scene 1

＂[Granville Barker] stands, in my eyes, second to none of his contemporaries.... I do not hesitate to say that I consider [his] plays the biggest things our modern movement has produced.＂

William Archer (1922)

＂It is a very great thing, that play of yours [THE SECRET LIFE].＂

T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), 1923

Harley Granville Barker’s mostly forgotten masterpiece, THE SECRET LIFE (1923), has had only two productions, none in the United States and none during Barker’s lifetime. This rich and deeply personal play, set in post-World War I England, charts a world that has become rudderless and lost, and where love between a one-time rising politician and a woman draped in tragedy cannot be reignited.

The Heritage of The Actor, included here, written as a companion piece to THE SECRET LIFE, is one of Barker’s most concise and brilliant essays on the art of making theater.

Harley Granville Barker, (1877-1946), actor, playwright, director, producer, theatre visionary; his other plays include AGNES COLANDER, THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE, WASTE, THE MADRAS HOUSE, and HIS MAJESTY. Other writings include the multi-volume Prefaces to Shakespeare, The Exemplary Theatre, and A National Theatre.

Preface by Richard Nelson and Colin Chambers