Warning! Textual Inaccuracies in the Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater section on Susan Glaspell!

Textual inaccuracies in the Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater section on Susan Glaspell

Discovered by Marcia Noe and Kathy Voccio, who wrote the following:

Glaspell scholars who have been heartened to see Susan Glaspell receive some long overdue recognition during the last two decades are in for an unpleasant surprise if they examine the way she is treated in the Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater. Although eight books and dozens of articles on Glaspell are available, many of them published in the last ten years, a biographical sidebar on Glaspell in this textbook is replete with factual inaccuracies, distortions, and misplaced emphases about Glaspell and the Provincetown Players. Ironically, the sidebar hails Glaspell as "the mother of American Drama" (a debatable title) and then proceeds to tell her life story, getting much of it wrong! Theatre student Kathy Voccio and Glaspell biographer and scholar Marcia Noe sent the following corrections in a letter to the editors of the Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater with the hope that when the book goes into another edition, they will correct these glaring inaccuracies:

1. In the heading of the Spotlight on page 21 Susan Glaspell's date of birth is listed as 1882. Glaspell was born July 1, 1876 (Noe 14).

2. In paragraph one it is stated, "In 1931 she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in drama." The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama was Zona Gale for Miss Lulu Bett (1920); the second was Susan Glaspell for Alison's House (1931) (The New York Public Library Book of Chronologies 285).

3. "The Iowa-born Glaspell attended Drake University in Des Moines, where she studied literature and journalism." (paragraph 2) In fact, Glaspell earned a Ph.B. (a bachelor's degree in philosophy) from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa in June of 1899. She never studied journalism at Drake. She did study literature there, the literature of the Bible. She also studied Greek, French, philosophy, history, and psychology (Noe 16).

4. Also in paragraph 2, it is stated that Glaspell was George Cram Cook's second wife. She was actually his third wife. Cook was first married to Sara Herndon Swain from whom he was divorced (date of divorce unknown). He then married Mollie Price in 1908, with whom he had two children, Harl and Nilla, and separated from her in 1911, later divorcing her (date of divorce unknown). On April 14, 1913 he married Susan Glaspell (Noe 24-29).

5. Paragraph 2 says that Glaspell was "working as a journalist in 1908" when she met “Jig” Cook, as he was nicknamed. Actually, she was at home in Davenport writing fiction after she had left her job at the Des Moines Daily News in 1901 (Ozieblo 29). She certainly met Cook prior to 1908, although it is hard to pinpoint the exact date. The Cook family was wealthy and eminent in Davenport, so Glaspell knew of them from her youth (Ozieblo 35). Linda Ben-Zvi reports that she met the Cook family for the first time in 1894 but does not specify that she met Jig then (331). Biographer Barbara Ozieblo cites The Road to the Temple that Glaspell met Cook and his mother for the first time around 1902, but beyond doubt she got to know Jig from the start of their participation in the Monist Society, which began meeting in 1907 (36-7).

6. The first play produced at Provincetown was not Suppressed Desires, as stated in Paragraph 2. Constancy, written by Neith Boyce (Hapgood), was the first play produced by the Provincetown Players at the home of Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood at 621 Commercial Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the summer of 1915, probably on July 15. The second play was Glaspell and Cook's Suppressed Desires (same date, same venue). The first play was done on the Hapgood's balcony; the audience then turned their chairs around and watched the second play in the Hapgoods' living room. There was no formal director. Set designer Robert Edmond Jones improvised a set from the Hapgood's furniture (Sarlos 14-15, 169).

7. While it is true the Provincetown Players relocated to the old stable on MacDougal Street (2nd paragraph), it was not the first move from Provincetown. During their second season (1916-1917), the Provincetown Players began a fall season for the first time in September of 1916 in Greenwich Village at 139 MacDougal Street, an old brownstone. For their third season (1917-1918) they moved to an old stable at 133 MacDougal Street (Sarlos 64, 95).

8. The last sentence of Paragraph 2 states "In 1925 Glaspell and Cook distanced themselves from the Provincetown Players when O'Neill assumed the leadership of the theater while the couple was in Greece (where Cook died)." Glaspell and Cook did become disaffected with the Broadway ambitions of several of the Provincetown Players, particularly Eugene O'Neill. They took a one-year sabbatical during the Players' 1919-1920 season, at which time an executive committee governed the Provincetown Players. After they returned, the conflict resumed. In March of 1922 Glaspell and Cook sailed for Delphi, Greece, and the Players were run by a triumvirate: Eugene O'Neill, Kenneth Macgowan, and Robert Edmond Jones. Cook died in Delphi in January of 1924; Glaspell returned to Provincetown later that year. Unable to resolve her differences with the group, Glaspell severed her ties completely with them in May of 1924 after the group formed a new company, The Experimental Theatre (Noe 41-52).

9. In paragraph 3, the text should say that Glaspell's play is titled Inheritors, not “The Inheritors” (Noe 42).

10. "Her Pulitzer Prize was tainted by controversy, largely because she held such liberal ideas" (paragraph 3) is not a correct statement. Her Pulitzer Prize was not "tainted" by controversy or anything else. The choice of Alison's House for the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for drama was not enthusiastically endorsed by the theatre community because of a widespread feeling that the play was not of Pulitzer quality (Noe 59-60. See also Gerhard Bach, Susan Glaspell und de Provincetown Players: Die Anfange des modernen amerikanischen Dramas und Theaters. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1979, 241-242).

Works Cited

Ben-Zvi, Linda. Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Noe, Marcia. Susan Glaspell: Voice from the Heartland. Macomb: Western Illinois University Press, 1983.

Ozieblo, Barbara. Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Sarlos, Robert. Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players: Theatre in Ferment. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982.