# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Tree, Herbert Beerbohm

​TREE, Sir HERBERT BEERBOHM (1852–1917), actor-manager, the second son of Julius Ewald Beerbohm (a London grain merchant of mixed German, Dutch, and Lithuanian extraction who had become naturalized as a British subject) by his wife, Constantia Draper, was born in London 17 December 1852. He was educated in England and at Schnepfenthal College, Thuringia, and was engaged for some time in his father's business. He was, however, already a member of several amateur dramatic clubs, and known privately as a clever mimic of popular actors. As an amateur he made several public appearances under the stage name of Beerbohm Tree in 1876, ​1877, and 1878, notably at the Globe Theatre (February 1878) in the part of Grimaldi in The Life of an Actress. His success on this occasion resulted in the offer of a professional engagement for a short tour, at the conclusion of which he was engaged by Henry Neville [q.v.] to play at the Olympic Theatre. From July to December 1878 he appeared at that theatre in several plays, and in the following year was definitely committed to a professional career, appearing in a succession of parts at several London theatres. From the first he was noticeable for his ingenuity in the playing of parts inclining towards eccentricity and giving scope for elaborate invention. He was also recognized as a cosmopolitan, and his first great success was in the part of the old Marquis de Pontsablé in Madame Favart, in which he toured towards the end of 1879. This brought him into prominence, and on his return to London in April 1880 he appeared at the Prince of Wales's Theatre with Geneviève Ward, as Prince Maleotti in Forget-me-not. Between July 1880 and April 1887, when he first entered into management on his own account, Tree appeared in over fifty plays, rounding a reputation for extraordinary versatility. His repertoire included Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Benjamin Backbite, and Joseph Surface, Malvolio, Prince Borowsky in The Glass of Fashion by Sydney Grundy, the Rev. Robert Spalding in The Private Secretary, Paolo Macari in Called Back, Mr. Poskett in (Sir) A. W. Pinero's The Magistrate, Baron Hartfeld in Jim the Penman, and Fagin in Oliver Twist. His most conspicuous successes during this period were in The Glass of Fashion (8 September 1883) and The Private Secretary (29 March 1884), the latter play owing a great deal to his invention.
On 20 April 1887 Tree became his own manager, and had the good fortune to begin with a popular success, appearing as Paul Demetrius in the Russian revolutionary play, The Red Lamp, by W. Outram Tristram. It was the kind of part in which he excelled, Paul Demetrius being a ‘character’ in the popular sense of the word. Tree might here indulge to the full an impishness which was the secret of his personal charm and of his success as a comedian. The play was so successful that in September of the same year he was able to take the Haymarket Theatre as lessee and manager, and there, with occasional absences, he remained until the opening of Her Majesty's Theatre in April 1897. During the ten years of his management he produced, and acted in, over thirty plays, appearing as Iago (7 March 1888), Falstaff (13 September 1888), Beau Austin in the play of that name by W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson (3 November 1890), the Duke of Guisbery in The Dancing Girl (15 January 1891), Hamlet (8 September 1891), the grandfather in Maeterlinck's The Intruder (27 January 1892), Lord Illingworth in Oscar Wilde's A Woman of No Importance (19 April 1893), Dr. Stockman in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People (14 June 1895), and Falstaff in Henry IV, Part I (8 May 1896). These productions are mentioned either as popular successes in the kind of part in which Tree personally excelled, or as bringing him definitely into relation with contemporary developments of the drama. His production of plays by Ibsen, Wilde, and Maeterlinck indicates an interest in the more important dramatic movements of the time not invariably shown by contemporary actor-managers, while the productions of Shakespeare were a preparation for the impressive exploits of his closing period. The number and variety of the plays from which these few examples are taken are a further proof of Tree's versatility and ardour in experiment. The seasons at the Haymarket were broken by journeys to America in January 1895 and November 1896, and by occasional visits to the provinces.
Her Majesty's Theatre, Tree's final theatrical home and the appropriate monument of his theatrical genius, was opened on 28 April 1897. Henceforth, with occasional diversions, all was to be done in the high Roman fashion. Shakespeare shared a noble stage with Tolstoi; and, if the author were not of the classic rank, Tree himself would appear, for the most part in illustrious disguise as the Duc de Richelieu, Mephistopheles, or Beethoven, in plays that endeavoured, if in vain, to do dramatic justice to their protagonists. The following is a selection from the list of parts in which he appeared at Her Majesty's: the Duc de Richelieu in The Silver Key (10 July 1897), Petruchio in Katharine and Petruchio (1 November 1897), Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (22 January 1898), D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers (3 November 1898), King John (20 September 1899), Bottom (10 January 1900), Herod (31 October 1900), Malvolio (5 February 1901), Ulysses (1 February 1902), Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor (10 June 1902), Prince Dmitri Nehludoff in Resurrection (17 February 1903), King Richard II (10 ​September 1903), Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (24 January 1905), Fagin in Oliver Twist (10 July 1905), Colonel Newcome in a play of that name (29 May 1906), Nero (25 June 1906), Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra (27 December 1906), Shylock (4 April 1908), Mephistopheles (5 September 1908), Sir Peter Teazle (7 April 1909), Ludwig von Beethoven in Beethoven (26 November 1909), Cardinal Wolsey in King Henry VIII (1 September 1910), Macbeth (5 September 1911), and Count Frithiof in The War God (8 November 1911).
During the closing period of Tree's activities the natural comedian was obscured by his serious ambition to rank as a great tragedian and a producer in the grand manner. There were interludes of condescension towards fashionable romantic drama. There was one notable essay in modernism in the production of G. B. Shaw's Pygmalion in 1914. But the impression which he finally left on the public mind was the result of his later productions of Shakespeare and of his attempt to revive poetic drama (Herod, 1900; Ulysses, 1902; Nero, 1906) under the influence of Stephen Phillips [q.v.]. The exuberant vitality which in Tree's earlier work had found a natural outlet in a fanciful elaboration of characters like Paul Demetrius in The Red Lamp, or the Rev. Robert Spalding in The Private Secretary, demanded in later life an ampler and more dignified expression. He fell in love with magnificence, and it was a magnificence that ran to big designs packed with extravagant detail. His stage arrangements, as in the forum scene in Julius Caesar or in the costly pageant of Henry VIII, were, like his personal performances, too elaborate and too full of invention and ingenuity to serve the purpose of tragedy, for which they lacked the necessary simplicity.
It was natural for a producer with an increasing passion for emphatic splendour to fall under the spell of Stephen Phillips, who was greeted by many serious critics of the time as the founder of a modern poetic drama. It was even more natural that he should take to its extravagant limit a method of producing Shakespeare which insisted on a sumptuous illustration of the author's lines, as close and as detailed as the arts of the scene painter and stage carpenter could compass. Tree lived to see a reaction in the art of production, which swung violently back from the method of illustrative realism to the method of suggestive decoration, and he had to encounter a good deal of hostility from younger men. But, in estimating his achievement, it must be remembered that the movement which he led to such clamant extremes began as a protest against the tawdriness and indifference of an earlier generation of producers, and that he did succeed in keeping an open house for Shakespeare in London by striking the popular imagination with splendid spectacle mounted with convincing enthusiasm and ability. The climax was his celebrated performance of Mark Antony in the forum scene, where all the complicated gestures and ingenious pantomime of his craft were displayed at leisure. In 1905 Tree began a series of Shakespeare festivals, repeated annually and culminating in 1910–1911 with an entire season during which only plays by Shakespeare were performed. His last professional adventure was a visit to Los Angeles in 1915 in fulfilment of 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 quite suddenly in London on 2 July of that year.
Tree's devotion to his profession and natural generosity of disposition prompted him to take a leading part in all that concerned its dignity and well-being. In 1904 he founded the Academy of Dramatic Art, and on the death of Sir Henry Irving he was elected president of the Theatrical Managers' Association. He was a trustee and vice-president of the Actors' Benevolent Fund and president of the Actors' Association. He was knighted by King Edward in 1909, having in 1907 received the order of the Crown from the German Emperor, and the order of the Crown of Italy from the King of Italy.
Tree was the author of several books, in which an enthusiastic personality may be seen at issue with an unpractised pen: Some Interesting Fallacies of the Modern Stage (1893), An Essay on the Imaginative Faculty (1893), Thoughts and After-Thoughts (1913), Nothing Matters (1917). He also wrote a one-act play entitled Six-and-Eightpence, produced in 1884. In 1882 he married Maud, daughter of William Holt, by whom he had three daughters.
There is a pencil-drawing of Tree by the Duchess of Rutland, executed in 1891, and a charcoal-drawing by J. S. Sargent.
[The Times, 3 July 1917; Max Beerbohm, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, 1920.]
J. L. P.