# What does George Pierce Baker (1919, Chapter I) mean by dramatic 'technique', and does he say it can be learned or taught?

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- updated: 2026-10-23T17:31:32.408Z
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Baker defines technique as a dramatist's 'ways, methods, and devices for getting his desired ends'. He says nobody has it as a gift at birth or gets it merely by writing plays; the route he describes is reading and seeing many plays, imitating models at first, and (in a line from Pinero that he quotes) 'hard study and generally ... long practice'. Chapter I never uses 'teach', 'taught' or 'rule'; that technique can be studied rests on his statement that the universal part is what a beginner 'must study and may copy' and on the book's own purpose. This is 1919 stage practice, argued from Baker's survey of plays, with no test of whether study works.

Baker defines technique as a dramatist's 'ways, methods, and devices for getting his desired ends'. He says nobody has it as a gift at birth or gets it merely by writing plays; the route he describes is reading and seeing many plays, imitating models at first, and (in a line from Pinero that he quotes) 'hard study and generally ... long practice'. Chapter I never uses 'teach', 'taught' or 'rule'; that technique can be studied rests on his statement that the universal part is what a beginner 'must study and may copy' and on the book's own purpose. This is 1919 stage practice, argued from Baker's survey of plays, with no test of whether study works.

Curator qualifications: Technique as ways and means, learned not born. The Pinero quotation is second-hand.

Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

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    {
      "url": "https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36580/pg36580.txt",
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```

Evidence claims:
- [sourced_fact] Baker defines technique as a dramatist's 'ways, methods, and devices for getting his desired ends'. He says nobody has it as a gift at birth or gets it merely by writing plays; the route he describes is reading and seeing many plays, imitating models at first, and (in a line from Pinero that he quotes) 'hard study and generally ... long practice'. Chapter I never uses 'teach', 'taught' or 'rule'; that technique can be studied rests on his statement that the universal part is what a beginner 'must study and may copy' and on the book's own purpose. This is 1919 stage practice, argued from Baker's survey of plays, with no test of whether study works. · locator: candidate evidence excerpts · source: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36580/pg36580.txt

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