George Pierce Baker (April 4, 1866 – January 6, 1935) was an American educator in the field of drama.
Baker graduated in the Harvard University class of 1887, and taught in the English Department at Harvard from 1888 until 1924. He started his "47 workshop" class in playwriting in 1905. He was instrumental in creating the Harvard Theatre Collection at Harvard University Library. In 1908 he began the Harvard Dramatic Club, acting as its sponsor, and in 1912 he founded Workshop 47 to provide a forum for the performance of plays developed within his English 47 class. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914. Unable to persuade Harvard to offer a degree in playwriting, he moved to Yale University in 1925, where he helped found the Yale School of Drama. He remained there until his retirement in 1933.
Baker was also selected to teach a seminar whose unconfirmed title was "Shakespeare" or "the English drama" at the Sorbonne University (Paris, France) in 1908.
Among those he taught in his playwriting class were George Abbott, Philip Barry, S.N. Behrman, Hallie Flanagan, Sidney Howard, Stanley McCandless, Eugene O'Neill, Edward Sheldon, Maurine Dallas Watkins, and Thomas Wolfe. His Dramatic Technique (1919) offered a codification in English of the principles of the well-made play.
George Pierce Baker was the father of George P. Baker who was dean of Harvard Business School.
Famous quotes containing the words pierce and/or baker:
“For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm’d its fire,
Show’d me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb?”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“Updike was the first to take the penile sensorium under the wing of elaborate metaphorical prose.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)