Life & Wisdom Quote by George P. Baker

Baker’s definition of drama is disarmingly generous, almost democratic: drama is anything that, through imitation, can make us care or feel delight. The key move is his refusal to anchor drama in prestige forms or moral purpose. He doesn’t say tragedy, catharsis, or “great works.” He says interest or pleasure, which quietly shifts authority away from gatekeepers and toward audiences and their attention. That’s a pragmatic, early-20th-century posture: drama as a technology of engagement, not a temple.

The phrase “imitative action” does more work than it seems. Baker is invoking mimesis, but sanding off the philosophical edges. Imitation here isn’t lesser-than-life copying; it’s a craft claim: staged behavior, however stylized, becomes meaningful because it resembles recognizable human motion and motive. Drama is less about beautiful language than about doing. The definition courts inclusivity - melodrama, farce, pageant, even the emerging grammar of film and popular entertainment - while still drawing a boundary: it must be action, embodied and legible.

Subtextually, Baker is making a case for theater as an art that competes in the marketplace of attention. “Rouses interest” hints at technique, pacing, stakes; “gives pleasure” nods to entertainment without apology. Coming from a teacher-scholar who helped professionalize playwriting study in America, the intent feels curricular: strip drama to its functional core so students can build upward. It’s a reminder that the high-minded talk about theater begins with a simpler wager: if it doesn’t move an audience, it isn’t drama yet.