Arts and Letters

George Pierce Baker was born on the fourth of April, 1866, at Providence; he was graduated at Harvard in 1887, the next year was appointed Instructor in English, was subsequently promoted to the Professorship, and taught at Harvard from 1888 to 1924, when he accepted a call to Yale as Professor of the History and Technique of the Drama, and Head of the new University Theatre. He retired owing to ill-health in 1933.

In 1907-1908 he was James Hazen Hyde lecturer in Paris at the Sorbonne.

He was elected a member of the Academy in 1925.

In addition to his academic work at Harvard and at Yale, Professor Baker himself wrote and directed historical pageants in various towns in America, which are a contribution to our social history.

His most important books are The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, and The Technique of the Drama.

From early childhood to the day of his death Professor Baker's chief interest was the art of the drama, and its relations with the theatre. When he began teaching in 1888, there were no opportunities offered at any university for the study of modern drama; and for many years Mr. Baker spent the major part of his time and energy in teaching English Composition, especially in the field of forensics. He performed this difficult task not only conscientiously, but with such energy that he elevated it almost to the position of a creative art. There are hundreds and hundreds of Harvard graduates who remember with gratitude and affection this prolonged grind in argumentative composition; for they came in later years to realize its value.

Fortunately for all concerned and certainly for his own spiritual welfare, he was from the start given a course in Elizabethan Drama, which field he had mastered as a scholar and taught as an apostle.

When I entered the Harvard Graduate School in 1890, I took this course, so that I have the honor of being enrolled among his pupils.

When he began to teach the art of play-construction, he made an academic number famous all over America—the number 47. The 47 Workshop was the title of the course directed and taught by Professor Baker; it was an absolutely practical course in the writing and stage production of plays. Students travelled from every part of the United States to become his pupils; many called but few were chosen. The number was ruthlessly kept down and only the elect were admitted.

Among these were Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, Philip Barry, S. N. Behrman, playwrights; Winthrop Ames, Maurice Wertheim, Theresa Helburn, George Haight, Henry Potter, Kenneth MacGowan; producers; many stage designers and dramatic critics, among whom is Walter Prichard Eaton. It should also be remembered that among those whom he advised not to write plays are Heywood Broun and Thomas Wolfe.

From this 47 Workshop Rowed a spirit of passionate enthusiasm for the theatre, incarnate in many young students, who devoted their lives to it.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

It is interesting to remember that the years of Professor Baker's career included the greatest period of British drama since the death of Shakespeare and the only period of importance in American drama.

The thirty years from 1895 to 1925 saw a creative outburst of genius in the British theatre unprecedented since the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth. When this mighty tide began to recede, the American theatre, which had never enjoyed a period of distinction, rose to its present flood. It is probable that more good plays have been written in the United States since 1925 than in any other country in the world. The theatre, in all its manifestations, has shown more progress in America since the World War than any other form of intellectual or artistic endeavour. There is simply no comparison between the present condition of the American theatre and that of any period in our past.

I love to remember the prophecy of our beloved American dramatist Bronson Howard. The ancients believed that often in the last hours of life men were given the power of prophecy, like Hector at the gates of Troy. Bronson Howard died in 1908. Shortly before his death he spoke these eloquent words:

The brilliant indications shown by our younger writers for the stage who are now crowding to the front, eager, earnest, and persistent, with their eyes on the future and not the past, coming from every walk of life, from universities and all other sources of active thought, are the basis of my prophecy. It is this: In all human probability the next great revival of literature in the language will be in the theatre. The English-speaking world has been gasping for literary breath, and now we begin to feel a coming breeze. I may not live to fully enjoy it, but every man of my own age breathes the air more freely already. Let us hope that the drama of this century will yet redeem our desert of general literature. The waters of our Nile are rising.

The part played in this tremendous movement by Professor Baker was significant. When he began his course of instruction in play-writing, there were very few American original plays of serious value; when he retired, the American theatre had reached fruition. There can be no doubt that his life devotion to the cause, with the large number of his successful pupils; counted for a great deal. And if there were any doubt, the individual testimonies of leading American dramatists would dispel it.

During the last eight years of his career, from 1925 to 1933, Professor Baker was the Head of the Yale University Theatre, which is a branch of the Department of the Yale School of Art. Here, thanks to the generosity and foresight and wisdom of Edward S. Harkness, Professor Baker had a modern theatre, fully equipped in every respect; his school of drama had found a home worthy of the art and of the man who taught it. The devotion of his pupils and of the staff of teachers became even stronger, if such a thing were possible, in these last years; and his death brought expressions of grief and loyal affection from every state in the Union.

It is impossible to speak of the work and influence of Professor Baker without a tribute to his wife. He was married in 1893 to Christina Hopkinson of Cambridge. She was his daily inspiration.