born Nov. 25, 1877, London, Eng.
died Aug. 31, 1946, Paris, France
British producer, playwright, and critic.
An actor from age 15, he directed his own first play, The Marrying of Ann Leete , in 1901. As comanager of the Court Theatre (190407) he produced many of George Bernard Shaw 's early plays as well as plays by Henrik Ibsen , Maurice Maeterlinck , and John Galsworthy , and also produced his own The Voysey Inheritance (1905) and Waste (1907). He influenced 20th-century theatre with his naturalistic stagings of Shakespeare's plays, which emphasized continuous action on an open stage and rapid, lightly stressed speech. He moved to Paris after World War I and there wrote Prefaces to Shakespeare (192746), a series of books of criticism.