George Cram Cook
George Cram Cook was an influential American playwright, novelist, and intellectual, born on October 7, 1873, in Davenport, Iowa. He pursued classical studies at the University of Iowa and Harvard University, later teaching at both institutions, as well as Stanford University. Cook's literary journey began with historical romances, including "Roderick Taliaferro" (1903), which reflected his early elitist views influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the Superman. Throughout his life, Cook experienced three marriages, with his final wife being playwright Susan Glaspell, with whom he co-authored the comedic play "Suppressed Desires."
Cook was a co-founder of the Provincetown Players, a theater group that played a significant role in the American avant-garde movement. His work with the group included producing "The Athenian Women," which addressed the tragic consequences of war. Despite his earlier aristocratic tendencies, he gradually shifted towards more socialist ideals, especially under the influence of his friend Floyd Dell. In 1922, Cook and Glaspell traveled to Greece, where he passed away in 1924, leaving a legacy celebrated by his peers and the Greek government. His contributions to theater and literature continue to be recognized for their innovative spirit and social commentary.
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George Cram Cook
Writer
- Born: October 7, 1873
- Birthplace: Davenport, Iowa
- Died: January 14, 1924
- Place of death: Greece
Biography
George Cram Cook, playwright, novelist, intellectual, and cofounder of the Provincetown Players, was born in Davenport, Iowa, on October 7, 1873. He majored in classical studies at the University of Iowa and at Harvard University and later studied at several European institutions, among them the University of Heidelberg. Upon his return to the United States, he taught classics at the University of Iowa and Stanford University, but he was never fond of academia, sometimes ridiculing its conservative nature in his plays. He enlisted in the Spanish-American War, but did not see any real combat.
Cook began his career as a writer with a number of historical romances. Typical of them is Roderick Taliaferro: A Story of Maximilian’s Empire (1903), an adventure story set in Mexico. The story is characterized by the elitist thinking that marks Cook’s writing at the time, a mind set much influenced by his reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman.
Cook spent the first decade of the twentieth century trying to settle down in his native Iowa. He married three times, first in 1902 to Sara Herndon Swain, whom he divorced in 1908. He then married Mollie A. Price, but this marriage would also fail as Cook became involved with a woman who was his intellectual match, the playwright Susan Glaspell, whom he married in 1913. During the latter part of his time in Iowa, Cook wrote steadily for the Friday Literary Review. He turned away from his aristocratic leanings under the influence of his longtime Iowa friend Floyd Dell, a socialist who became editor of the Friday Literary Review. This change and the intellectual struggle which accompanied it are apparent in Cook’s last novel, The Chasm (1911).
A new period in Cook’s life began when he and Glaspell moved to New York City and became involved in theater. The pair coauthored Suppressed Desires, a spoof on the Freudian psychoanalytic theories popular at the time. When the play was performed in 1915 in a makeshift theater at the end of a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the two authors appeared in its major roles. The play concerns a woman who has been championing Freudian theories in New York, recommending psychoanalysis to anyone who will listen. The only thing that can change Henrietta Brewster’s mind about the value of Freud’s ideas is the event at the center of the play: her sister, Mabel, is convinced by a psychoanalyst that she is suppressing her desire for Henrietta’s husband, Stephen. The iconoclastic Provincetown audience gave a warm reception to the short comedy and it was on the bill of the Provincentown Players the next summer, together with Bound East for Cardiff by Eugene O’Neill, the most famous of the playwrights nurtured by Cook’s group.
In 1918, the Players produced two of Cook’s plays, The Athenian Women and Tickless Time. The former is a serious, full-length play in which Cook used his knowledge of classical antiquity to construct a story about the tragic waste of war. The latter is a light- hearted short satire on the dangers of carrying idealism too far. When the Provincetown Players moved to New York City in 1921, another period in Cook’s life ended. He believed the move was a commercialization of the theater group he loved. In 1922, Cook and Glaspell sailed for Greece, the country of Cook’s dreams, and he died there in 1924, loved by his neighbors and decorated with special honor by the Greek government.