Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Encyclopedia
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (17 December 1852 – 2 July 1917) was an English actor and theatre manager
.
Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre
, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the rebuilding, and became manager, of His Majesty's Theatre
. Again, he promoted a mix of Shakespeare and classic plays with new works and adaptations of popular novels, giving them spectacular productions in this large house, and often playing leading roles. His wife, actress Helen Maud Holt
, often played opposite him and assisted him with management of the theatres.
Although Tree was regarded as a versatile and skilled actor, particularly in character roles, by his later years, his technique was seen as mannered and old fashioned. He founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
in 1904 and was knighted
, for his contributions to theatre, in 1909. His famous family includes his siblings, explorer Julius Beerbohm
, author Constance Beerbohm
and half-brother caricaturist
Max Beerbohm
. His daughters were Viola
, an actress, Felicity
and Iris
, a poet; and his illegitimate children included film director Carol Reed
. A grandson was the actor Oliver Reed
.
, London as Herbert Draper Beerbohm, Tree was the second son and second child of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1810–1892), of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the couple had four children. His younger brother was the author and explorer Julius Beerbohm
, and his sister was author Constance Beerbohm
. A younger half-brother was the parodist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm
from his father's second marriage. Max jokingly claimed that Herbert added the "Tree" to his name because it was easier for audiences than shouting "Beerbohm! Beerbohm!" at curtain calls. The latter part of his surname, "bohm", is north German dialect for "tree".
Tree's early education included Mrs Adams's Preparatory School at Frant
, Dr Stone's school in King's Square, Bristol
, and Westbourne collegiate school in Westbourne Grove
, London. After these, he attended his father's alma mater, Schnepfeuthal College in Thuringia
, Germany. Upon his return to England, he began performing with amateur troupes, eventually using the name Herbert Beerbohm Tree, while working in his father's business.
In 1878 he played Grimaldi in Dion Boucicault
's The Life of an Actress at the Globe Theatre
; shortly after, he began his professional career. For the next six years, he performed mainly on tour in the British provinces, playing character roles, although he made his London debut late in 1878 at the Olympic Theatre
under the management of Henry Neville
. His first real success was as the elderly Marquis de Pontsablé in Madame Favart
, in which he toured towards the end of 1879. Another London engagement was as Prince Maleotti in a revival of Forget-me-Not at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1880. His first London success came as the Rev. Robert Spalding in Charles Hawtrey's adaptation of The Private Secretary
in 1884. He made many comic embellishments to the role, which added to the popularity of the play. His next role was Paolo Marcari in Called Back by Hugh Conway
. The contrast between this dashing Italian spy and his timid parson in Hawtrey's play, showed his versatility as a character actor. Other appearances over the next two years included roles in revivals of A. W. Pinero's The Magistrate and W. S. Gilbert
's Engaged
. In 1886 he played Iago
in Othello
and Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal
with F. R. Benson's company at Bournemouth
. The same year, in London, he made a success at the Haymarket Theatre
, in the character role of Baron Harzfeld in Jim the Penman by Charles Young.
. His first production was a successful run of the Russian revolutionary play The Red Lamp by W. Outram Tristram, in which Tree took the role of Demetrius.
Later in the year, he became the manager of the prestigious Haymarket Theatre
. Since the departure of the Bancrofts
in 1885, that theatre's reputation had suffered, which Tree's tenure there restored. He produced and appeared on stage in some thirty plays during this decade. While popular farces and melodramas like the stage adaptation of Trilby
anchored the repertoire (the production ran for an extraordinary 260 performances), Tree also encouraged the new drama, staging Maeterlinck's The Intruder (1890), Ibsen's An Enemy of the People
(1893) and Wilde
's A Woman of No Importance
(1893), among others. He supported new playwrights by producing special "Monday night" performances of their new plays. Tree also mounted critically acclaimed productions of Hamlet
(1892), Henry IV, Part 1
(1896) and The Merry Wives of Windsor
(1889), establishing himself as a Shakespearean leading man. The Times
thought his Hamlet a "notable success", but not everyone agreed: W.S. Gilbert said of it, "I never saw anything so funny in my life, and yet it was not in the least vulgar." In 1889 Tree also produced Charles Haddon Chambers
's play The Tyranny of Tears. His Haymarket seasons were broken by American visits in January 1895 and November 1896, and occasional visits to the provinces.
With the profits he had accumulated at the Haymarket, Tree helped financed the rebuilding of Her Majesty's Theatre
in grand and tasteful Louis XV style, which he then owned and managed. He lived in the theatre from its completion in 1897 until his death in 1917. For his personal use, he had a banqueting hall and living room installed in the massive, central, square French-style dome. The theatre historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope
, wrote of the theatre, "Simply to go to His Majesty's was a thrill. As soon as you entered it, you sensed the atmosphere ... In Tree's time it was graced by footmen in powdered wigs and liveries ... Everything was in tone, nothing cheap, nothing vulgar." Tree opened his theatre during Queen Victoria
's Diamond Jubilee year, 1897, associating the new structure with an imperial celebration.
Over the next two decades, Tree staged approximately sixty plays there, programming a repertory at least as varied as he had at the Haymarket. his first production at Her Majesty's was a dramatization of Gilbert Parker
's The Seats of the Mighty. Tree mounted new plays by prominent British playwrights, such as Carnac Sahib (1899) by Henry Arthur Jones
. His productions were exceptionally profitable; they were famous, most of all, for their elaborate and often spectacular scenery and effects. Unlike some other famous actor-managers, Tree engaged the best actors available to join his company and hired the best designers and composers for the plays with incidental music
. His productions starred such famous and talented actors as Constance Collier
, Ellen Terry
, Madge Kendal
, Winifred Emery
, Julia Neilson
, Violet Vanbrugh
, Oscar Asche
, Arthur Bourchier
, and Lewis Waller
.
Tree often starred in the theatre's dramatizations of popular nineteenth-century novels, such as Sydney Grundy
's adaptation of Dumas
's Musketeers (1898); Tolstoy
's Resurrection (1903); Dickens's Oliver Twist (1905), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1908) and David Copperfield (1914); and Morton's dramatization of Thackeray
's The Newcomes
, called Colonel Newcome (1906), among others. Tree staged many contemporary verse dramas by Stephen Phillips
and others, including Herod (1900), Ulysses (1902), Nero (1906) and Faust (1908). Adaptations of classic foreign plays included Beethoven by Louis Parker, an adaptation of the play by Réné Fauchois (1909); A Russian Tragedy, an English version by Henry Hamilton of the play by Adolph Glass (1909); and The Perfect Gentleman by W. Somerset Maugham
, an adaptation of the classic Molière
play, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1913). The classical repertory included such works as The School for Scandal (1909). Tree also programmed popular melodramas, farces, romantic comedies and premieres, such as George Bernard Shaw
's Pygmalion
, in 1914, in which Tree played Henry Higgins
opposite the Eliza of Mrs Patrick Campbell
. The actor John Gielgud
wrote, "Rehearsing Pygmalion with Tree she must have been impossible. They were both such eccentrics. They kept ordering each other out of the theatre with Shaw in the middle, trying to cope with them." Tree also took his productions on tour in America many times and visited Berlin's Royal Opera House in 1907 at the invitation of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Gilbert remarked that Tree had been invited by the Kaiser "with the malignant motive of showing the Germans what impostors we all are."
at the Lyceum Theatre
during the Victorian period. Tree worked untiringly to make Shakespeare popular with the theatregoing public. He mounted sixteen Shakespeare productions, many of which earned enough success to justify revivals during subsequent seasons. He also established annual Shakespeare festival from 1905 to 1913 that showcased a total over two hundred performances by his company and other acting troupes. Tree overturned the popular wisdom at the time that Shakespeare productions would lose money, creating stagings that appealed widely to patrons. In fact, the theatre's first Shakespearian play, Julius Caesar
, was its first commercial success in 1898, running for 165 consecutive performances and selling 242,000 tickets. The next two years saw two more hits, King John and A Midsummer Night's Dream
. Tree's longest-running revival, Henry VIII
, ran for a sensational 254 consecutive performances from 1 September 1910 to 8 April 1911. Many of the others were similar hits.
Tree staged the Shakespeare plays, in particular, to appeal to the broad public taste for realistic scenery and scenic effects and lavish spectacle, mirroring the Edwardian fashion for luxury and extravagance. For example, in The Winter's Tale
(1906), there was a woodland glade with a shepherd's cottage and babbling brook; in The Tempest
(1904), a replica of a sixteenth-century vessel was tossed in a storm; in The Merchant of Venice
(1908), he recreated an authentic Renaissance ghetto. Tree expounded his views on staging in 1897:
Tree sometimes interpolated scenes of famous historical events into the plays to provide even more spectacle, such as King John's granting of Magna Carta
or Anne Boleyn's coronation in Westminster Abbey
.
Tree also pursued four Shakespeare film projects during his career at Her Majesty's. Of great historical interest is the filming, in 1899, of three brief segments from his production of King John, in which he starred and directed. This is the first film record of a Shakespeare play. Charles Urban
filmed the opening shipwreck from the 1904 revival of The Tempest at the theatre in 1905; Tree, whose role in the production was Caliban, did not appear in this scene. Tree played Cardinal Wolsey in a 1911 studio film by William Barker
of a five-scene version of Henry VIII, based on the theatre's 1910 production. Tree was paid the unprecedented sum of £1000 lest the film prove unsatisfactory, or damage ticket sales of the theatre presentation. Filming took place at studios in Ealing
, west London and took only one day, thanks to careful preparation beforehand. The film was presented to the public on 27 February 1911 in various theatres in London and in the provinces, and was a huge success. The Moving Picture World
wrote, "The picture is without doubt the greatest that has even been attempted in this country, and I am almost tempted to say in any other ... the acting passes anything ever seen in moving pictures before.... The effect on the moving picture industry here will be enormous." In California
in 1916, Tree played the title role in a film of Macbeth
, by D. W. Griffith
(considered a lost film
).
According to Tree's biographers, critics and audiences considered Tree to be the best character actor of his day. He himself detested the term "character actor": "All acting should be character acting. What is Shylock? A character part. What are Macbeth and Richard III but character parts? What are Hamlet, Iago, or Othello but character parts? What are Brutus, Mark Antony and Cassius? Such characters as Romeo of course require the appearance of youth and those graces of person which will alone commend the Mantuan lover to his Juliet. But even here, an audience will be more moved by the intellectual suggestion of a Jean de Reszke
, than by the inadequate posturings of a youthful nincompoop." He was an exceptional mime and demonstrated unrivalled versatility in creating individual characterisations. He was particularly praised for his vivid characters with eccentric and idiosyncratic and habits, including Fagin, Falstaff and Svengali. His diligent preparation and attention to detail in make-up, gesture, body position and facial expression allowed him to inhabit these roles. He used his expressive eyes to project such varied emotions as "the dreamy languor of Hamlet during his moments of reflection and the baleful hatred of Shylock
towards his persecutors to the nervous fear of Richard II during his surrender at Flint Castle. His Malvolio
was a swaggering and conceited fool, King John a superstitious and deceitful coward, and Macbeth a neurotic and self-torturing monarch." The literary critic Desmond MacCarthy
wrote of Tree: "He could make himself look like Falstaff. He understood and revelled in the character of Falstaff, but his performance lacked fundamental force. Hence the contradiction in his acting: his performance as a whole often fell short of high excellence, yet these same impersonations were lit by insight and masterly strokes of interpretation, which made the spectator feel that he was watching the performance of the most imaginative of living actors."
In the great tragic Shakespearean roles, however, Tree was overshadowed by earlier actors such as Henry Irving. During performance, Tree allowed inspiration to suggest to him appropriate stage business, which sometimes lead to inconsistent interpretations in his portrayals of a role. The Manchester Guardian
wrote, "The wonderful thing about him was his amazing versatility, and there was an intellectual virility, an untiring earnestness about the man, which was irresistibly stimulating." Tree's versatility, however, was a two edged sword: he quickly tired of characters after a brief run and sought to add business and details to the part to sustain his interest, which led to further character inconsistencies in long runs. Tree's voice was described as thin, and he was sometimes criticized for struggling to project it in a manner that made his performance seem unnatural. In the last decade of his career, Tree's technique was seen as mannered and old fashioned. His spectacles, too, in comparison with the experimental methods of Poel
and other producers, seemed outdated, although Tree responded to his critics by noting that his productions remained profitable and well attended.
(1863–1937) in 1882; she often played opposite him and assisted him with management of the theatres. Her charm also assisted the couple's entry into prominent social and élite artistic and intellectual circles. Their daughters were actresses Viola Tree
(who married theatre critic Alan Parsons) and Felicity Tree
(who married Sir Geoffrey Cory-Wright, third baronet) and poet Iris Tree
(who married Curtis Moffat
, becoming Countess Ledebur). Tree also fathered several illegitimate children, including six with (Beatrice) May Pinney and other mistresses, including film director Carol Reed
and Peter Reed, the father of the British actor Oliver Reed
. He was also the grandfather of Hollywood screenwriter and producer Ivan Moffat
and the great-great-grandfather of actress Georgina Moffat
.
Tree founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA) in 1904. He also served as president of the Theatrical Managers' Association and assisted the Actors' Benevolent Fund and the Actors' Association. For his contributions to theatre, he was knighted
in 1909. During World War I
, Tree contributed his celebrity by delivering patriotic addresses. He wrote several books discussing the importance of the theatre and the arts in modern society.
Tree's last professional undertaking was a visit to Los Angeles in 1915 fulfilling a contract with a film company. He was in America for the greater part of 1915 and 1916. He returned to England in 1917 and died, aged 64, from pulmonary blood clots. According to writer Vera Brittain
, he died suddenly in the arms of her friend, the novelist Winifred Holtby
, then aged 19 and working as a nursing assistant at a fashionable London nursing home where Tree was recuperating from surgery to repair a broken leg. His remains were cremated, and his ashes rest at Hampstead
cemetery.
(afterwards HMV
, couplings as E numbers) in 1906.
dedicated her setting of Byron's "So we'll go no more a-roving" to Tree, "in grateful remembrance of 13 July 1888".
In his autobiographical novel
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
(published in 1928), Siegfried Sassoon
comments that his mother was "always intending to go to a matinee of Beerbohm Tree's new Shakespearean production". In the musical Cats
, Gus the Theatre Cat claims, "He has acted with Irving
, he's acted with Tree".
Actor-manager
An actor-manager is a leading actor who sets up their own permanent theatrical company and manages the company's business and financial arrangements, sometimes taking over the management of a theatre, to perform plays of their own choice and in which they will usually star...
.
Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the rebuilding, and became manager, of His Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
. Again, he promoted a mix of Shakespeare and classic plays with new works and adaptations of popular novels, giving them spectacular productions in this large house, and often playing leading roles. His wife, actress Helen Maud Holt
Helen Maud Holt
Helen Maud Holt , professionally known as Mrs Beerbohm Tree and later Lady Tree, was an English actress...
, often played opposite him and assisted him with management of the theatres.
Although Tree was regarded as a versatile and skilled actor, particularly in character roles, by his later years, his technique was seen as mannered and old fashioned. He founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
in 1904 and was knighted
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
, for his contributions to theatre, in 1909. His famous family includes his siblings, explorer Julius Beerbohm
Julius Beerbohm
Julius Beerbohm was a Victorian travel-writer, engineer and explorer.He was the son of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm , of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the...
, author Constance Beerbohm
Constance Beerbohm
Constance Beerbohm was the oldest daughter of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm , of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the couple had four children...
and half-brother caricaturist
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
. His daughters were Viola
Viola Tree
Viola Tree was an English actress, singer, playwright and author. Daughter of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, she made many of her early appearances with his company at His Majesty's Theatre...
, an actress, Felicity
Felicity Tree
Lady Felicity Cory-Wright was an English baronetess, the daughter of the actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his wife, the actress Helen Maud Holt...
and Iris
Iris Tree
Iris Tree was an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress....
, a poet; and his illegitimate children included film director Carol Reed
Carol Reed
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director best known for Odd Man Out , The Fallen Idol , The Third Man and Oliver!...
. A grandson was the actor Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed was an English actor known for his burly screen presence. Reed exemplified his real-life macho image in "tough guy" roles...
.
Early life and career
Born in KensingtonKensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
, London as Herbert Draper Beerbohm, Tree was the second son and second child of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1810–1892), of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the couple had four children. His younger brother was the author and explorer Julius Beerbohm
Julius Beerbohm
Julius Beerbohm was a Victorian travel-writer, engineer and explorer.He was the son of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm , of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the...
, and his sister was author Constance Beerbohm
Constance Beerbohm
Constance Beerbohm was the oldest daughter of Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm , of Dutch, Lithuanian, and German origin, who had come to England in about 1830 and set up as a prosperous corn merchant. He married an Englishwoman, Constantia Draper, and the couple had four children...
. A younger half-brother was the parodist and caricaturist Max Beerbohm
Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.-Early life:...
from his father's second marriage. Max jokingly claimed that Herbert added the "Tree" to his name because it was easier for audiences than shouting "Beerbohm! Beerbohm!" at curtain calls. The latter part of his surname, "bohm", is north German dialect for "tree".
Tree's early education included Mrs Adams's Preparatory School at Frant
Frant
-Demography:The population of Frant rose steadily from just under 1,100 in 1801 to a peak in 1891 of around 3,500. The records show a marked drop to 1,692 in 1901, but this is due to the transfer of the Broadwater Down parish to Tunbridge Wells that took place in 1894...
, Dr Stone's school in King's Square, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, and Westbourne collegiate school in Westbourne Grove
Westbourne Grove
Westbourne Grove is a retail road running across Notting Hill, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a section of west London, England. It runs from Kensington Park Road in the west to Queensway in the east, crossing over Portobello Road...
, London. After these, he attended his father's alma mater, Schnepfeuthal College in Thuringia
Thuringia
The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....
, Germany. Upon his return to England, he began performing with amateur troupes, eventually using the name Herbert Beerbohm Tree, while working in his father's business.
In 1878 he played Grimaldi in Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
's The Life of an Actress at the Globe Theatre
Globe Theatre (Newcastle Street)
The Globe was a Victorian theatre built in 1868 and demolished in 1902. It was the third of five London theatres to bear the name. It was also known at various times as the Royal Globe Theatre or Globe Theatre Royal. Its repertoire consisted mainly of comedies and musical shows...
; shortly after, he began his professional career. For the next six years, he performed mainly on tour in the British provinces, playing character roles, although he made his London debut late in 1878 at the Olympic Theatre
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
under the management of Henry Neville
Henry Neville
Sir Henry Neville was an English courtier, politician and diplomat. In 2005, he was put forward as a candidate for the authorship of Shakespeare's works.- Early life :...
. His first real success was as the elderly Marquis de Pontsablé in Madame Favart
Madame Favart
Madame Favart is an opéra comique, or operetta, in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Alfred Duru and Henri Charles Chivot.-Performance history:...
, in which he toured towards the end of 1879. Another London engagement was as Prince Maleotti in a revival of Forget-me-Not at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in 1880. His first London success came as the Rev. Robert Spalding in Charles Hawtrey's adaptation of The Private Secretary
The Private Secretary
The Private Secretary is a popular 1883 farce in three acts, by Sir Charles Henry Hawtrey. The play was adapted from the German Der Bibliothekar, a book by Gustav von Moser....
in 1884. He made many comic embellishments to the role, which added to the popularity of the play. His next role was Paolo Marcari in Called Back by Hugh Conway
Hugh Conway
Hugh Conway, the pen name of Frederick John Fargus , was an English novelist born in Bristol, the son of an auctioneer.-Early life:...
. The contrast between this dashing Italian spy and his timid parson in Hawtrey's play, showed his versatility as a character actor. Other appearances over the next two years included roles in revivals of A. W. Pinero's The Magistrate and W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
's Engaged
Engaged (play)
Engaged is a three-act farcical comic play by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Haymarket Theatre on 3 October 1877, the same year as The Sorcerer, one of Gilbert's comic operas written with Arthur Sullivan, which was soon followed by the collaborators' great success in H.M.S. Pinafore...
. In 1886 he played Iago
Iago
Iago is a fictional character in Shakespeare's Othello . The character's source is traced to Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi . There, the character is simply "the ensign". Iago is a soldier and Othello's ancient . He is the husband of Emilia,...
in Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
and Sir Peter Teazle in The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal
The School for Scandal is a play written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on May 8, 1777.The prologue, written by David Garrick, commends the play, its subject, and its author to the audience...
with F. R. Benson's company at Bournemouth
Bournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
. The same year, in London, he made a success at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
, in the character role of Baron Harzfeld in Jim the Penman by Charles Young.
Theatre manager and leading roles
In 1887, at age thirty-four, Tree took over the management of the Comedy Theatre in the West End of LondonWest End of London
The West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...
. His first production was a successful run of the Russian revolutionary play The Red Lamp by W. Outram Tristram, in which Tree took the role of Demetrius.
Later in the year, he became the manager of the prestigious Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
. Since the departure of the Bancrofts
Squire Bancroft
Sir Squire Bancroft , born Squire White Butterfield, was an English actor-manager. He and his wife Effie Bancroft are considered to have instigated a new form of drama known as 'drawing-room comedy' or 'cup and saucer drama', owing to the realism of their stage sets.-Early life and career:Bancroft...
in 1885, that theatre's reputation had suffered, which Tree's tenure there restored. He produced and appeared on stage in some thirty plays during this decade. While popular farces and melodramas like the stage adaptation of Trilby
Trilby (novel)
Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time, perhaps the second best selling novel of the Fin de siècle after Bram Stoker's Dracula. Published serially in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895 and sold 200,000 copies in the United...
anchored the repertoire (the production ran for an extraordinary 260 performances), Tree also encouraged the new drama, staging Maeterlinck's The Intruder (1890), Ibsen's An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People
An Enemy of the People is an 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen wrote it in response to the public outcry against his play Ghosts, which at that time was considered scandalous...
(1893) and Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
's A Woman of No Importance
A Woman of No Importance
A Woman of No Importance is a play by Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. The play premièred on 19 April 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. It is a testimony of Wilde's wit and his brand of dark comedy...
(1893), among others. He supported new playwrights by producing special "Monday night" performances of their new plays. Tree also mounted critically acclaimed productions of Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
(1892), Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1
Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV , and Henry V...
(1896) and The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
(1889), establishing himself as a Shakespearean leading man. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
thought his Hamlet a "notable success", but not everyone agreed: W.S. Gilbert said of it, "I never saw anything so funny in my life, and yet it was not in the least vulgar." In 1889 Tree also produced Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers was an Australian-born dramatist, active in England.-Early life:Chambers was born in Petersham, Sydney, the son of John Ritchie Chambers, who had a good position in the New South Wales civil service, came from Ulster, his mother, Frances, daughter of William...
's play The Tyranny of Tears. His Haymarket seasons were broken by American visits in January 1895 and November 1896, and occasional visits to the provinces.
With the profits he had accumulated at the Haymarket, Tree helped financed the rebuilding of Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
in grand and tasteful Louis XV style, which he then owned and managed. He lived in the theatre from its completion in 1897 until his death in 1917. For his personal use, he had a banqueting hall and living room installed in the massive, central, square French-style dome. The theatre historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope
W. J. MacQueen-Pope
Walter James MacQueen-Pope was an English theatre historian and publicist. From a theatrical family which could be traced back to contemporaries of Shakespeare, he was in management for the first part of his career, but switched to publicity, in which field he became well-known...
, wrote of the theatre, "Simply to go to His Majesty's was a thrill. As soon as you entered it, you sensed the atmosphere ... In Tree's time it was graced by footmen in powdered wigs and liveries ... Everything was in tone, nothing cheap, nothing vulgar." Tree opened his theatre during Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
's Diamond Jubilee year, 1897, associating the new structure with an imperial celebration.
Over the next two decades, Tree staged approximately sixty plays there, programming a repertory at least as varied as he had at the Haymarket. his first production at Her Majesty's was a dramatization of Gilbert Parker
Gilbert Parker
Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker, 1st Baronet PC , known as Gilbert Parker, Canadian novelist and British politician, was born at Camden East, Addington, Ontario, the son of Captain J. Parker, R.A....
's The Seats of the Mighty. Tree mounted new plays by prominent British playwrights, such as Carnac Sahib (1899) by Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist.-Biography:Jones was born at Granborough, Buckinghamshire to Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits...
. His productions were exceptionally profitable; they were famous, most of all, for their elaborate and often spectacular scenery and effects. Unlike some other famous actor-managers, Tree engaged the best actors available to join his company and hired the best designers and composers for the plays with incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
. His productions starred such famous and talented actors as Constance Collier
Constance Collier
Constance Collier was an English film actress and acting coach.-Life and career:Born Laura Constance Hardie, in Windsor, Berkshire, Collier made her stage debut at the age of 3, when she played Fairy Peasblossom in A Midsummer's Night Dream...
, Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, Madge Kendal
Madge Kendal
Dame Madge Kendal GBE , born as Margaret Shafto Robertson, was an English actress of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, best known for her roles in Shakespeare and English comedies. Together with her husband, W. H...
, Winifred Emery
Winifred Emery
Winifred Emery , born Maud Isabel Emery, was an English actress and actor-manager of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She was the wife of the actor Cyril Maude....
, Julia Neilson
Julia Neilson
Julia Neilson was an English actress best known for her numerous performances as Lady Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel, for her roles in many tragedies and historical romances, and for her portrayal of Rosalind in a long-running production of As You Like It.After establishing her reputation in a...
, Violet Vanbrugh
Violet Vanbrugh
Violet Vanbrugh was an English actress who had a career spanning more than 50 years. Despite her many successes, her career was overshadowed by that of her more famous sister Irene Vanbrugh...
, Oscar Asche
Oscar Asche
John Stange Heiss Oscar Asche , better known as Oscar Asche, was an Australian actor, director and writer, best known for having written, directed, and acted in the record-breaking musical Chu Chin Chow, both on stage and film, and for acting in, directing, or producing many Shakespeare plays and...
, Arthur Bourchier
Arthur Bourchier
Arthur Bourchier was an English actor and theatre manager. He married and later divorced the actress Violet Vanbrugh....
, and Lewis Waller
Lewis Waller
William Lewis Waller was an English actor and theatre manager. His father was a civil engineer.Born in Spain, he first appeared on the London stage in 1883, at Tooles, and for some years added to his reputation as a capable actor...
.
Tree often starred in the theatre's dramatizations of popular nineteenth-century novels, such as Sydney Grundy
Sydney Grundy
Sydney Grundy was an English dramatist. Most of his works were adaptations of European plays, and many became successful enough to tour throughout the English-speaking world...
's adaptation of Dumas
Dumas
Dumas is a Southern French topographic surname, with fused preposition and definite article du, for someone who lived in an isolated dwelling in the country rather than in a village, from Occitan mas 'farmstead' .- People :...
's Musketeers (1898); Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
's Resurrection (1903); Dickens's Oliver Twist (1905), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1908) and David Copperfield (1914); and Morton's dramatization of Thackeray
Thackeray
Thackeray is the name of:*William Makepeace Thackeray, a novelist*Bal Thackeray, an Indian politician*Edward Talbot Thackeray, a recipient of the Victoria Cross*A David Thackeray, a South African astronomer...
's The Newcomes
The Newcomes
The Newcomes is an novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1855.-Publication:The Newcomes was published serially over about two years, as Thackeray himself says in one of the novel's final chapters...
, called Colonel Newcome (1906), among others. Tree staged many contemporary verse dramas by Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips
Stephen Phillips was a highly famed English poet and dramatist, who enjoyed considerable popularity in his lifetime....
and others, including Herod (1900), Ulysses (1902), Nero (1906) and Faust (1908). Adaptations of classic foreign plays included Beethoven by Louis Parker, an adaptation of the play by Réné Fauchois (1909); A Russian Tragedy, an English version by Henry Hamilton of the play by Adolph Glass (1909); and The Perfect Gentleman by W. Somerset Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
, an adaptation of the classic Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
play, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1913). The classical repertory included such works as The School for Scandal (1909). Tree also programmed popular melodramas, farces, romantic comedies and premieres, such as George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's Pygmalion
Pygmalion (play)
Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...
, in 1914, in which Tree played Henry Higgins
Henry Higgins
Henry Higgins may refer to:*The fictional character: see Pygmalion or My Fair Lady*The Australian politician and judge H. B. Higgins* Henry Higgins -See also:*Harry Higgins, English cricketer*Henry Huggins, fictional character...
opposite the Eliza of Mrs Patrick Campbell
Mrs Patrick Campbell
Mrs Patrick Campbell was a British stage actress.-Early life and marriages:Campbell was born Beatrice Stella Tanner in Kensington, London, to John Tanner and Maria Luigia Giovanna, daughter of Count Angelo Romanini...
. The actor John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
wrote, "Rehearsing Pygmalion with Tree she must have been impossible. They were both such eccentrics. They kept ordering each other out of the theatre with Shaw in the middle, trying to cope with them." Tree also took his productions on tour in America many times and visited Berlin's Royal Opera House in 1907 at the invitation of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Gilbert remarked that Tree had been invited by the Kaiser "with the malignant motive of showing the Germans what impostors we all are."
Shakespeare
Under Tree, however, Her (later His) Majesty's Theatre was most famous for its work with Shakespeare, building an international reputation as the premier British playhouse for his works during the Edwardian era, which had for so long belonged to Henry IrvingHenry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
at the Lyceum Theatre
Lyceum Theatre
- United Kingdom :* Lyceum Theatre, London, a 2,000-seat West End theatre located in the City of Westminster* Lyceum Theatre , an Edwardian period Grade II listed building and theatre* Lyceum Theatre , a 1068-seat theatre in the City of Sheffield...
during the Victorian period. Tree worked untiringly to make Shakespeare popular with the theatregoing public. He mounted sixteen Shakespeare productions, many of which earned enough success to justify revivals during subsequent seasons. He also established annual Shakespeare festival from 1905 to 1913 that showcased a total over two hundred performances by his company and other acting troupes. Tree overturned the popular wisdom at the time that Shakespeare productions would lose money, creating stagings that appealed widely to patrons. In fact, the theatre's first Shakespearian play, Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (play)
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, also known simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It portrays the 44 BC conspiracy against...
, was its first commercial success in 1898, running for 165 consecutive performances and selling 242,000 tickets. The next two years saw two more hits, King John and A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
. Tree's longest-running revival, Henry VIII
Henry VIII (play)
The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight is a history play by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on the life of Henry VIII of England. An alternative title, All is True, is recorded in contemporary documents, the title Henry VIII not appearing until the play's publication...
, ran for a sensational 254 consecutive performances from 1 September 1910 to 8 April 1911. Many of the others were similar hits.
Tree staged the Shakespeare plays, in particular, to appeal to the broad public taste for realistic scenery and scenic effects and lavish spectacle, mirroring the Edwardian fashion for luxury and extravagance. For example, in The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale
The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...
(1906), there was a woodland glade with a shepherd's cottage and babbling brook; in The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
(1904), a replica of a sixteenth-century vessel was tossed in a storm; in The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
(1908), he recreated an authentic Renaissance ghetto. Tree expounded his views on staging in 1897:
Tree sometimes interpolated scenes of famous historical events into the plays to provide even more spectacle, such as King John's granting of Magna Carta
Magna Carta
Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215 and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions, which included the most direct challenges to the monarch's authority to date. The charter first passed into law in 1225...
or Anne Boleyn's coronation in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
.
Tree also pursued four Shakespeare film projects during his career at Her Majesty's. Of great historical interest is the filming, in 1899, of three brief segments from his production of King John, in which he starred and directed. This is the first film record of a Shakespeare play. Charles Urban
Charles Urban
Charles Urban was an Anglo-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in British cinema before the First World War...
filmed the opening shipwreck from the 1904 revival of The Tempest at the theatre in 1905; Tree, whose role in the production was Caliban, did not appear in this scene. Tree played Cardinal Wolsey in a 1911 studio film by William Barker
William Barker
William Barker may refer to:*William Barker , English translator and MP for Great Yarmouth and Bramber*Sir William Barker, 5th Baronet , British Member of Parliament for Ipswich, Thetford and Suffolk...
of a five-scene version of Henry VIII, based on the theatre's 1910 production. Tree was paid the unprecedented sum of £1000 lest the film prove unsatisfactory, or damage ticket sales of the theatre presentation. Filming took place at studios in Ealing
Ealing
Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...
, west London and took only one day, thanks to careful preparation beforehand. The film was presented to the public on 27 February 1911 in various theatres in London and in the provinces, and was a huge success. The Moving Picture World
The Moving Picture World
The Moving Picture World was an influential early trade journal for the American film industry, from 1907 to 1927. By 1914, it had a reported circulation of approximately 15,000.The publication was founded by James Petrie Chalmers, Jr...
wrote, "The picture is without doubt the greatest that has even been attempted in this country, and I am almost tempted to say in any other ... the acting passes anything ever seen in moving pictures before.... The effect on the moving picture industry here will be enormous." In California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1916, Tree played the title role in a film of Macbeth
Macbeth (1916 film)
Macbeth is a silent, black and white 1916 film adaptation of the classic William Shakespeare play, Macbeth.It was directed by John Emerson, and released on June 4, 1916 in the United States, and on February 26, 1917 in Japan. This version of Macbeth was produced by D. W. Griffith, with...
, by D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
(considered a lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
).
Reputation and last years
Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, , was a Polish tenor. Renowned internationally for the high quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing, he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century....
, than by the inadequate posturings of a youthful nincompoop." He was an exceptional mime and demonstrated unrivalled versatility in creating individual characterisations. He was particularly praised for his vivid characters with eccentric and idiosyncratic and habits, including Fagin, Falstaff and Svengali. His diligent preparation and attention to detail in make-up, gesture, body position and facial expression allowed him to inhabit these roles. He used his expressive eyes to project such varied emotions as "the dreamy languor of Hamlet during his moments of reflection and the baleful hatred of Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...
towards his persecutors to the nervous fear of Richard II during his surrender at Flint Castle. His Malvolio
Malvolio
Malvolio is the steward of Olivia's household in William Shakespeare's comedy, Twelfth Night, or What You Will.-Style:Malvolio's ethical values are commonly used to define his appearance.In the play, Malvolio is defined as a "kind of" Puritan...
was a swaggering and conceited fool, King John a superstitious and deceitful coward, and Macbeth a neurotic and self-torturing monarch." The literary critic Desmond MacCarthy
Desmond MacCarthy
Sir Desmond MacCarthy was a British literary critic and journalist.-Early life and education:MacCarthy was born in Plymouth, Devon, and educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he got to know Lytton Strachey, Bertrand Russell and G. E...
wrote of Tree: "He could make himself look like Falstaff. He understood and revelled in the character of Falstaff, but his performance lacked fundamental force. Hence the contradiction in his acting: his performance as a whole often fell short of high excellence, yet these same impersonations were lit by insight and masterly strokes of interpretation, which made the spectator feel that he was watching the performance of the most imaginative of living actors."
In the great tragic Shakespearean roles, however, Tree was overshadowed by earlier actors such as Henry Irving. During performance, Tree allowed inspiration to suggest to him appropriate stage business, which sometimes lead to inconsistent interpretations in his portrayals of a role. The Manchester Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
wrote, "The wonderful thing about him was his amazing versatility, and there was an intellectual virility, an untiring earnestness about the man, which was irresistibly stimulating." Tree's versatility, however, was a two edged sword: he quickly tired of characters after a brief run and sought to add business and details to the part to sustain his interest, which led to further character inconsistencies in long runs. Tree's voice was described as thin, and he was sometimes criticized for struggling to project it in a manner that made his performance seem unnatural. In the last decade of his career, Tree's technique was seen as mannered and old fashioned. His spectacles, too, in comparison with the experimental methods of Poel
William Poel
William Poel was an English actor, theatrical manager and dramatist best known for his presentations of Shakespeare.-Life and career:...
and other producers, seemed outdated, although Tree responded to his critics by noting that his productions remained profitable and well attended.
Personal
Tree married actress Helen Maud HoltHelen Maud Holt
Helen Maud Holt , professionally known as Mrs Beerbohm Tree and later Lady Tree, was an English actress...
(1863–1937) in 1882; she often played opposite him and assisted him with management of the theatres. Her charm also assisted the couple's entry into prominent social and élite artistic and intellectual circles. Their daughters were actresses Viola Tree
Viola Tree
Viola Tree was an English actress, singer, playwright and author. Daughter of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, she made many of her early appearances with his company at His Majesty's Theatre...
(who married theatre critic Alan Parsons) and Felicity Tree
Felicity Tree
Lady Felicity Cory-Wright was an English baronetess, the daughter of the actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his wife, the actress Helen Maud Holt...
(who married Sir Geoffrey Cory-Wright, third baronet) and poet Iris Tree
Iris Tree
Iris Tree was an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress....
(who married Curtis Moffat
Curtis Moffat
Curtis Moffat was an abstract photographer, color still life and society portraitist. At times he collaborated with Man Ray.-Biography:...
, becoming Countess Ledebur). Tree also fathered several illegitimate children, including six with (Beatrice) May Pinney and other mistresses, including film director Carol Reed
Carol Reed
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director best known for Odd Man Out , The Fallen Idol , The Third Man and Oliver!...
and Peter Reed, the father of the British actor Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed was an English actor known for his burly screen presence. Reed exemplified his real-life macho image in "tough guy" roles...
. He was also the grandfather of Hollywood screenwriter and producer Ivan Moffat
Ivan Moffat
Ivan Moffat was a British screenwriter and associate producer who, with Fred Guiol, was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for adapting Edna Ferber's novel Giant into the film Giant....
and the great-great-grandfather of actress Georgina Moffat
Georgina Moffat
Georgina Moffat is an Australian / English singer-songwriter, actress and model. Georgina currently uses an alias for her music career. She is the great granddaughter of poet, actress and muse Iris Tree, the granddaughter of Ivan Moffat, and the great great granddaughter of RADA founder Sir...
.
Tree founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
(RADA) in 1904. He also served as president of the Theatrical Managers' Association and assisted the Actors' Benevolent Fund and the Actors' Association. For his contributions to theatre, he was knighted
Knight Bachelor
The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
in 1909. During World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Tree contributed his celebrity by delivering patriotic addresses. He wrote several books discussing the importance of the theatre and the arts in modern society.
Tree's last professional undertaking was a visit to Los Angeles in 1915 fulfilling a contract with a film company. He was in America for the greater part of 1915 and 1916. He returned to England in 1917 and died, aged 64, from pulmonary blood clots. According to writer Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was a British writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.-Life:Born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Brittain was the...
, he died suddenly in the arms of her friend, the novelist Winifred Holtby
Winifred Holtby
Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, best known for her novel South Riding.-Life and writings:...
, then aged 19 and working as a nursing assistant at a fashionable London nursing home where Tree was recuperating from surgery to repair a broken leg. His remains were cremated, and his ashes rest at Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
cemetery.
Discography
Tree recorded five 10" records for the Gramophone CompanyGramophone Company
The Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organization for the famous "His Master's Voice" label...
(afterwards HMV
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
, couplings as E numbers) in 1906.
- 1312 Hamlet's Soliloquy on Death – 'To be, or not to be' from HamletHamletThe Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
(Shakespeare) (3554/E162). (See external link) - 1313 SvengaliSvengaliSvengali is a fictional character of George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. Svengali "would either fawn or bully and could be grossly impertinent. He had a kind of cynical humour that was more offensive than amusing and always laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place...
mesmerises Trilby – 'The roof of your mouth is like the dome of the Pantheon' from TrilbyTrilbyA trilby hat is a type of fedora. The trilby is viewed as the rich man's favored hat; it is commonly called the "brown trilby" in England and is much seen at the horse races. It is described as a "crumpled" fedora...
(G. du MaurierGeorge du MaurierGeorge Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a French-born British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier...
) (3751/E162). - 1314 Mark AntonyMark AntonyMarcus Antonius , known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general. As a military commander and administrator, he was an important supporter and loyal friend of his mother's cousin Julius Caesar...
's lament over the body of Julius Caesar – 'Oh pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth' from Julius CaesarJulius Caesar (play)The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, also known simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It portrays the 44 BC conspiracy against...
(Shakespeare) (3557/E161). - 1315 (Richard IIRichard II of EnglandRichard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
's) Soliloquy on the death of kings – 'No matter where – of comfort no man speak' from Richard IIRichard II (play)King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
(Shakespeare) (3556/E163). - 1316 FalstaffFalstaffSir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is...
's speech on Honour – 'Hal, if thou see me down in battle/'Tis not due yet...' from Henry IV, Part 1Henry IV, Part 1Henry IV, Part 1 is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare's tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV , and Henry V...
(Shakespeare) (3555/E161).
Popular culture references
The songwriter Maude Valerie WhiteMaude Valerie White
Maude Valérie White was a French-born English composer who became one of the most successful songwriters of the Victorian period.-Early years:...
dedicated her setting of Byron's "So we'll go no more a-roving" to Tree, "in grateful remembrance of 13 July 1888".
In his autobiographical novel
Autobiographical novel
An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is a novel by Siegfried Sassoon, first published in 1928 by Faber and Faber. It won both the Hawthornden Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, being immediately recognised as a classic of English literature...
(published in 1928), Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...
comments that his mother was "always intending to go to a matinee of Beerbohm Tree's new Shakespearean production". In the musical Cats
Cats (musical)
Cats is a musical composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot...
, Gus the Theatre Cat claims, "He has acted with Irving
Henry Irving
Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...
, he's acted with Tree".
External links
- Herbert Beerbohm Tree in postcards at Shakespeare & the Players, Emory UniversityEmory UniversityEmory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
- Tree archive at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, University of BristolUniversity of BristolThe University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
- Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Hamlet reading 'To be or not to be'
- Image of the actor in costume