ABSTRACT
The Court Theatre production of Elizabeth Robins's play, Votes for Women, in the Spring of 1907, identifies an important moment in theater history. After more than fifteen years of growing realism and attention to social issues in drama— most graphically marked, perhaps, by Janet Achurch's playing of Nora in the London production of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House —this play addressed the politics of women's suffrage in an overtly didactic manner. Robins was well known as the actress who, early in the 1890s, had initiated a reappraisal of Ibsen with her independent productions of several of his plays. The play's director, Harley Granville Barker, is now regarded for his modernist directorial innovations. Prior to Barker's innovations, stage management had been in the hands of the actor-managers, and the theater had sacrificed artistic integrity to the star-status of the leading performer, who was also the principal investor.
