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Beerbohm Tree's Production of ‘The Tempest’, 1904

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Brian Pearce
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Abstract

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853–1917) is remembered today as a great character actor, as a personality, and as a wit: but as a producer he is seldom considered an important or even a positive influence on the course of Shakespearean interpretation in the twentieth century. Focusing on Tree's 1904 production of The Tempest, Brian Pearce argues that Tree was in fact an original and inventive director. Contrasting the faint praise or contempt of theatre historians with the adoption of many of Tree's ideas in later literary criticism of The Tempest, Pearce also suggests that the acceptance of the right of contemporary experimental directors to act in effect as ‘scenic artists’ sits oddly with attitudes to Tree's work, in which he fulfilled precisely such a role. Brian Pearce completed his PhD at the University of London in 1992, and since returning to South Africa has worked as a theatre director. He is a member of the board of directors of the Durban Theatre Workshop Company, and also teaches drama at Technikon Natal.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 44 , November 1995 , pp. 299 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes and References

1. For an account of how modern scholars have tended to undervalue Tree's productions, see my PhD thesis, ‘The Re-evaluation of Shakespeare's Late Plays 1896–1938’, University of London, 1992, p. 94–102.

2. Campbell, O. J., ed., A Shakespeare Encyclopedia (London: Methuen, 1966), p. 859Google Scholar.

3. Nilan, M., ‘The Tempest at the Turn of the Century: Cross-Currents in Production’, in Muir, K., ed., Shakespeare Survey, XXV (Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., p. 123.

5. Tree, H. B., ed., W. Shakespeare: The Tempest, as Arranged for the Stage (London: Miles and Co., 1904)Google Scholar.

6. Promptbook of The Tempest belonging to Fred Grove, Bristol University Theatre Collection.

7. The Era, 17 September 1904.

8. In the introduction to The Shakespearean Tempest (1932), Wilson Knight writes of the persistence of tempest imagery throughout Shakespeare's plays: ‘It is always the same tempest; and indeed, it is continually given almost exactly repetitive phrases in description’. The tempest is Shakespeare's intuition of discord and conflict, ‘of tempestuousness at the heart of existence’. When Wilson Knight begins his chapter on the final plays, he comments that where in earlier plays ‘we have seen tempests become wedded to the plot, closely entwined therewith, and expanding their significance symbolically throughout the drama’, now ‘the poetic image tends not only to blend with, but actually to become the plot’. See Knight, G. Wilson, The Shakespearean Tempest (London: Methuen, 1953), p. 16Google Scholar, 218.

9. Dickins, R., Forty Years of Shakespeare on the English Stage, August 1867 to August 1907: a Student's Memories (London, 1907), p. 111–12Google Scholar.

10. The Illustrated London News, 24 September 1904.

11. Fitzgerald, P., Shakespearean Representation: Its Laws and Limits (London: Elliot Stock, 1908), p. 45Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., p. 47–48.

13. Knight, G. Wilson, Shakespearean Production (London: Faber, 1964), p. 211Google Scholar.

14. Still, C., Shakespeare's Mystery Play: a Study of The Tempest (London: Cecil Palmer, 1921)Google Scholar.

15. Strachey, L., ‘Shakespeare's Final Period’, in Books and Characters (London: Chatto and Windus, 1922)Google Scholar.

16. Pearson, H., Beerbohm Tree: His Life and Laughter (London: Methuen, 1956), p. 132Google Scholar.

17. Hirst, David, in his Text and Performance: The Tempest (London: Macmillan, 1984)Google Scholar, affirms that ‘The Tempest is a play about power’. Von Rosador begins his essay, ‘With almost Pinteresque insistence The Tempest dramatizes conflicts of dominance and subservience’: See von Rosador, K. T., ‘The Power of Magic: from Endimion to The Tempest’, in Wells, S., ed., Shakespeare Survey, XLIII (Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 1Google Scholar. See also Kott, Jan, ‘Prospero's Staff’, in Shakespeare Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1965)Google Scholar.

18. G. Wilson Knight, Shakespearean Production, op. cit., p. 212–13.

19. The Times Literary Supplement, 27 September 1963, p. 744.

20. See in particular Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, October 1904, p. 576–8, and Tree's reply in his pamphlet, ‘The Tempest in a Teacup’, reprinted in H. B. Tree, Thoughts and Afterthoughts (London: Cassell, 1913), p. 211–24.

21. Bradby, D. and Williams, D., Directors' Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1988), p. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.