1 Studies of the National Theatre include Elsom, John and Tomalin, Nicholas, The History of the National Theatre (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978)Google Scholar; Emmet, Alfred, “The Long Prehistory of the National Theatre,” Theatre Quarterly, 6, No. 21 (Spring 1976), 55–62Google Scholar; Carr, Philip, “The National Theatre Plan: ‘Memories of the Early Struggle,’” Manchester Guardian, 13 July 1951, p. 6Google Scholar; Whitworth, Geoffrey, The Making of a National Theatre (London: Faber, 1951)Google Scholar; and Bryan, George B., “Dear Winston's Clever Mother: Lady Randolph Churchill and the National Theatre,” Theatre Survey, 15(1974), 143–170CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elsom and Tomalin have a chapter on the SMNT period, which does not mention the actor-managers' protest. Bryan inflates the role of Lady Randolph Churchill, who served as a society fund-raiser, into that of policy maker.

2 Articles that exemplify this tendency include Rosenfeld, Sybil, “Some Experiments of Beerbohm Tree,” Nineteenth Century Theatre Research, 2 (1974), 73–83Google Scholar, which praises Tree's experimentation in the modern dramatic repertoire; and Rowell, George, “Tree's Shakespeare Festivals (1905–13),” Theatre Notebook, 39 (1975), 74–81Google Scholar. These and other recent studies praise Tree and his colleagues for their contribution to the National Theatre movement. Whitworth credits Tree for having in 1908 “already acknowledged his conversion to the ideas of the Theatre group” (The Making of a National Theatre, p. 74). Carr, who clearly knew better from his participation on the SMNT Executive Committee, nevertheless records that “the actor-managers, who fought shy of the whole thing at first, then decided that it would not do to be left out, and pretended that they had been enthusiastic supporters from the beginning” (“The National Theatre Plan,” p. 6). Several scholars credit Tree's Shakespeare Festivals as a contribution to the National Theatre movement. Rowell feels that the Festivals “were a substantial step towards the goal” set out by William Archer and Granville Barker in Schemes and Estimates for a National Theatre (p. 74). Rosenfeld claims that “Tree was interested in the scheme of a National Theatre and saw Her Majesty's, albeit unsubsidized, as fulfilling some of its functions” (p. 82). merely, Michael Mullin reports that in 1911 “there was talk of founding a National Theatre with Tree at its head” (“Strange Images of Death: Sir Herbert Tree's Macbeth, 1911,” Theatre Survey, 17 [1976], 127)Google Scholar. Norman Marshall feels that “it was typical of Tree's generosity of spirit” that he should invite Poel, William to produce The Two Gentlemen of Verona at the 1910 Festival (The Producer and the Play [London: MacDonald, 1962], p. 145)Google Scholar. And Tree's biographer, Pearson, Hesketh, feels that Tree, in his 1911 Festival, “had already started a National Theatre and had obtained the support of his fellow-managers for an undertaking that was more imposing than that of any continental State Theatre in existence” (Beerbohm Tree: His Life and Laughter [New York: Harper Bros., 1956], p. 165)Google Scholar.

3 These papers are housed in two moldy trunks in the basement of the British Theatre Center (formerly the British Drama League). I am grateful to Mr. Walter Lucas of the BDL and Ms. Yolande Bird of the National Theatre for permission to examine these papers, and to Miss Tracy and Miss Langstrith of the BDL for their assistance in deciphering much of the material. To my knowledge, the only scholars to have consulted these papers are John Elsom and Nicholas Tomalin. Tomalin examined the papers while he was preparing his book on the history of the National Theatre; Elsom took over the project, along with Tomalin's notes, after Tomalin died in 1973.

4 Era, 28 March 1908. A similar view was expressed by Wilson Barrett in the Era, 27 October 1898.

5 Archer, William and Barker, H. Granville, A National Theatre: Schemes and Estimates (London: Duckworth, 1907), p. xviiiGoogle Scholar.

6 Era, 16 May 1908.

7 Illustrated Handbook Issued by the Executive Committee [of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre, 1909], p. 11, SMNT papers.

8 Archer first formulated this view in “What can be done for the Drama,” Anglo-Saxon Review, 4 (1900), 233Google Scholar.

9 Archer and Barker, Schemes and Estimates, p. 11.

10 Schemes and Estimates, p. xvi.

11 Schemes and Estimates, p. 129.

12 Report of the Executive Committee, adopted by the General Committee on 23 March 1909 (mimeographed report, issued in print in 1909 by the Executive Committee as Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre; A Brief Account of the History of the Movement with Constitution and Scheme, SMNT papers). The question of who might actually fill the position of first Director of the National Theatre was raised several times during the newspaper debates of 1908 and through the years that followed. Beerbohm Tree addressed this point in the Sunday Times in April, 1908: “Before we think of money a thought should be given to a factor more important than the shekels. For the base of the undertaking, the power by which it stands or falls, is the selection of the right man in command. Is there such a man? that is the question” (undated clipping, Tree scrapbooks, University of Bristol Theatre Collection). Barnes, J. H. suggested Johnston Forbes Robertson in 1910 (Forty Years on the Stage, [London: Chapman and Hall, 1914])Google Scholar, and Granville-Barker is said to have suggested George Alexander for the post (Mason, A. E. W., Sir George Alexander and the St. James's Theatre [London: Macmillan, 1935])Google Scholar. In 1907 Archer privately confessed that it was a Barker-style director, indeed Barker himself, who was envisioned when the “blue book” was formulated: “When Barker and I three years ago tried to get some one to realize the scheme set forth in the Blue Book … we were handicapped by the fact that we could not point to a desirable and available manager. Many is the hour I spent with Pinero, Barrie and others over this question of the Director, and we never got any forrader. Of course, I knew all the time that Barker was the man” (letter to Herbert Trench, 15 December 1907, in Whitworth, The Making of a National Theatre, p. 61). Shaw formally submitted Barker's name as director in 1924, though by that time Barker had largely retired from active theatre work (letter from Shaw to Israel Gollancz, 10 July 1924, SMNT papers). Speculation on the identity of the director was a running concern among theatre practitioners during the Edwardian period. W. Bridges-Adams tells of a speech by Gordon Craig at a testimonial dinner at the Cafe Royal on 16 July 1911, in which Craig began to read a list of suitable names from a small card he pulled from his pocket, and then unhinged a string of cards taped to the first and named everyone in the room (letter to Speaight, Robert, 5 January 1957, in The Bridges-Adams Letter Book [London: Society for Theatre Research, 1971], p. 71)Google Scholar.

13 Hughes, Alan, in “Henry Irving's Finances: The Lyceum Accounts 1878–1899,” Nineteenth Century Theatre Research, 1 (1973), 79–87Google Scholar, shows that Irving's decision to sell out to the Lyceum Company, Ltd., was not based on financial duress, but was instead motivated by a conscious financial choice. That Irving would willfully choose this alternative form of theatrical financing supports my contention that managerial structures were generally changing during the Edwardian period.

14 Irving first came out publicly in favor of a National Theatre in 1878, when he was quoted by George Godwin at the Social Science Congress (see Andrews', Alan review of Elsom and Tomalin, The History of a National Theatre, in Theatre Journal, 31 [1979], 138)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. When it was rumored that Andrew Carnegie was prepared to endow a theatre in London, Irving again showed his support (Era, 13 April 1901).

15 The defection of both Sarah Bernhardt and Constant Coquelin from the ranks of the Comédie Francaise, however, led William Archer to speculate that “in our endowed Theatre, such a talent as MrIrving, Henry would probably find no place” (“A Plea for an Endowed Theatre,” Fortnightly Review, n.s. 45 [1889], 626)Google Scholar.

16 Quoted by Pollock, W. H. in Era, 22 January 1910Google Scholar. Pollock's recollection, some five years after Irving's death, may have been tempered by the events of that year relating to the SMNT.

17 Typed draft, with pencilled emendations and emphases, of a fund-raising speech for the SMNT by John Martin Harvey, SMNT papers.

18 In Mask, 2, Nos. 4–6 (October 1909), 84. Shaw was responding to a questionnaire distributed by Edward Gordon Craig to leading English theatrical figures. The poll, slanted in opposition to the SMNT, raised the question of whether art flourishes best within an institutional structure, or whether the SMNT endowment might be better spent in the form of grants to individual artists; Henry Irving was mentioned explicitly in the questionnaire in order to suggest that the individual is more important than the institution. Among the respondents who agreed with Craig are Martin Harvey and Beerbohm Tree.

19 Tree's collaboration with Godwin, E. W. is described in John Stokes, Resistible Theatres: Enterprise and Experiment in the Late Nineteenth Century Theatre (London: Paul Elek, 1972), pp. 43–45, 52–53Google Scholar.

20 Lecture to the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching at Burlington House, 10 June 1898, quoted in Era, 18 June 1898.

21 Era, 18 June 1898.

22 Times, 26 August 1904.

23 Times, 30 August 1904.

24 Shakespeare Memorial Committee Minutes Book (labelled IG5), minutes of Special Committee Meeting at Mansion House, 24 May 1905, SMNT papers. Proposal five, an academic research and exhibition center, reflects the academic bias of the Committee chaired by Professor Israel Gollancz. Proposal four was the work of William Poel; Poel recalled three years later that he had recommended “the erection of a building in which Shakespeare's plays could be acted without scenery. But Mr. Beerbohm Tree, who was present, challenged this part of the scheme, and after a lively debate, it was decided, by the narrow majority of one vote … to omit from the report all reference to the suggestion” (letter to the Daily News, 28 April 1908).

25 Letter, dated 1 February 1905, on His Majesty's Theatre letterhead, SMNT papers. This, and other unpublished letters by Tree, are printed by permission of Mr. David Tree Parsons.

26 Typed report in 1924 by Israel Gollancz, quoting from the report of the Shakespeare Memorial Committee, dated 6 July 1905, SMNT papers. In 1908, during the National Theatre debates in the press, the SMC offered a different explanation of why they had rejected the proposal, claiming “that although the matter had been under discussion for many years, no workable scheme for a theatre national in the ordinary sense of the term had been accepted by those able to appreciate the difficulties of the problem” (draft letter, dated 22 April 1908, in the SMNT papers, printed on 24 April 1908 in the Times, Standard, Morning Post, and other papers). This, despite the existence of the privately circulated Schemes and Estimates. Note that Tree's responsibility for the decision, and his self-interested motives, are excluded from the public explanation.

27 1905 Shakespeare Festival Program, in the Herbert Beerbohm Tree Collection, University of Bristol Theatre Collection.

28 Tree's first Shakespeare Festival was the product of several interrelated organizational decisions over the preceding year, including his last-minute failure to take over Benson's festival in Stratford, the first season of a touring “repertoire” company founded by Tree earlier that season, and the foundation of his Academy of Dramatic Art. I intend to explain the interrelationship of these events in a future article.

29 Daily Chronicle, 14 May 1908, and elsewhere.

30 See, for example, Era, 24 October 1908; Daily Chronicle, 14 May 1908; and Saturday Review, 16 May 1908.

31 Punch, 18 March 1908.

32 Lord Howard de Walden was a wealthy theatre enthusiast, who by this time was involved in a Welsh National Drama Society and the British Empire Shakespeare Society; he would later financially support Oscar Asche's production of Laurence Binyon's Attila, Herbert Trench's Haymarket Theatre Company, Granville Barker's repertory seasons at the St. James's Theatre, and Gordon Craig's Theatre School in Florence. Alfred Lyttelton, a nephew of Gladstone, had been colonial secretary under Balfour; his wife, Edith, was a close friend of Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and Lady Randolph Churchill. Comyns Carr was an art critic and verse dramatist who dabbled in theatre management; he was chairman of the board of the ill-fated Lyceum Company, Ltd., and became a managerial advisor to Beerbohm Tree at both the Haymarket and Her/His Majesty's Theatres. Philip Carr, his son, was a National Theatre advocate and colleague of Granville Barker. Edmund Gosse is the noted essayist and critic.

33 Beerbohm, Max, Last Theatres (New York: Taplinger, 1970), pp. 259–260Google Scholar; review from 11 August 1906.

34 Standard, 23 March 1909. Bourchier had first backed the idea in 1907 in the pages of the Daily Mail (quoted in Era, 13 April 1907). See also leaders in Era, 27 March 1909 and 4 April 1908.

35 Reported in London Daily News, 20 April 1909; Era, 24 April 1909; and elsewhere. The papers quoted the speech in the subjunctive, which I have tacitly emended throughout to the indicative.

36 Several repertory theatre schemes were afoot in 1909–10, including the Trench/ Harrison at the Haymarket, Frohman's repertory season at the Duke of York's, and Tree's matinee series at His Majesty's Theatre. Shaw, Barker, and Pinero, with Galsworthy and Barrie, were involved in Frohman's scheme, leading several members of the SMNT Executive Committee to suspect them of conflict of interest. Edith Lyttelton warned Shaw of Gollancz's suspicions in an undated letter in the British Library Manuscript Department.

37 See the comments by Irving, H. B. quoted in Era, 1 May 1909Google Scholar, and by Ainley, Henry, quoted in Era, 22 May 1909Google Scholar; a leader in Era, 12 June 1909, called His Majesty's Theatre “as ‘national’ as any theatre can be.”

38 Tree gave some warning of his possible complicity in an interview in Era, 6 November 1909, in which he talked about the “strain” the career of an actor-manager “entails upon the individual.”

39 Daily Mail, 26 November 1909.

40 SMNT papers. Tree wired back, authorizing the Committee to state that “the statement in question … did not emanate directly or indirectly from me.” H. S. Perris, secretary to the Executive Committee, sent off a retraction to the Daily Mail stating that “Sir Herbert Tree authorises Professor Gollancz … to state that the paragraph in today's Daily Mail appeared absolutely without his knowledge” and that Tree “expressed great surprise at the publication of the statement referred to.” Either this retraction was not sent, or the Daily Mail chose not to print it.

41 Letter from Shaw to Pinero, 29 November 1909, in Collected Letters, ed. Laurence, Dan H. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972), II, 885Google Scholar. Shaw also implicates George Alexander, though this is the only reference I have found to Alexander's participation in the actor-managers' rebellion; Shaw may have been misinformed. Shaw mocked Bourchier for forgetting that there were two other “obscure mummers,” Hare and Forbes Robertson, representing actor-managers on the Executive Committee. Pinero, in his 1 December reply to Shaw's letter, was not surprised that an actor-manager like Bourchier would forget everyone but himself (British Museum Department of Manuscripts).

42 Quoted in Whitworth, The Making of The National Theatre, p. 94. In quoting this letter, he is the only historian, scholar, or critic who even mentions the 1909 actor-managers' conspiracy; but he minimizes the event's importance, writing that “this particular antagonism soon petered out. As for the S.M.N.T. Committee, they paid little attention to it.”

43 SMNT papers.

44 SMNT papers. Gollancz instructed that the contents of the letter be relayed to Lyttelton and Hare.

45 SMNT papers.

46 SMNT papers.

47 Executive Committee Minutes Book, entry for 16 December 1909, SMNT papers. All subsequent quotations from this meeting are from this source.

48 Typed copy of a letter from Edith Lyttelton to Frederick Whelen, 16 November 1909, SMNT papers. According to a pencilled note in the corner, this letter was not sent.

49 Letter from Bourchier to Tree, c. January, 1910, SMNT papers. Tree forwarded the letter to Gollancz, apologizing for the delay and expressing his hope for a meeting.

50 This Committee, as announced in Era, 12 March 1910, consisted of Frank R. Benson, Bourchier, John Martin Harvey, H. B. Irving, Cyril Maude, William Poel, Fred Terry, Herbert Trench, Lewis Waller, Mrs. Kendal, Ellen Terry, and Tree (chairman).

51 Era, 30 April 1910.

52 “It is often said that our productions of Shakespeare are merely commercial appeals to a sensation-loving public. I modestly claim that we sincerely endeavor to present Shakespeare in such a way as we believe he would have approved. It is very gratifying to me that Shakespeare as we present him here is always sure of a hearty welcome at the hands of the public. But even if they were satisfied with what is called an adequate presentation, I, as an artist, should not be. I am the servant of the public, but I am master of myself. It is sometimes said by pedants that Shakespeare himself desired only this adequate treatment of his plays; but these epicures of mediocrity forget one important factor — that it was Shakespeare's love of spectacle that caused the Globe Theatre to be burned down by the firing of the guns in Henry VIII. This brings me to my future plans … ” (quoted in Era, 7 May 1910). This last remark was a promotion for his forthcoming production of Henry VIII. Note several standard features of Tree's argument: praise for the commercial theatre system, glorification of the integrity of the artist unfettered by organizational restrictions, and an attack on the “adequacy” of the Elizabethan revivalists, including William Poel, whose production of Two Gentlemen of Verona had been featured during Tree's festival.

53 Era, 4 June 1910. Fred Terry, an actor-manager who served on Tree's ad hoc “London Shakespeare Committee,” stated in the Era 30 April 1910: “I cannot think for one moment that a National Theatre is necessary. The London Theatres are in themselves one huge repertory theatre.” Martin Harvey, in a fund-raising speech supporting the SMNT, declared, “the fact that so many distinguished members of my calling have lent their names to the Festival at His Majesty's Theatre is surely proof of their desire to honour Shakespeare in the most practical way, and indirectly to show their sympathy and belief in the ultimate destiny of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre” (typed draft, SMNT papers). Indirectly indeed!

54 In the 1904 Postscript Prologue to Schemes and Estimates, the authors wrote that “it is not a combination under one roof of His Majesty's, the St. James's, and the Haymarket that we desire to see achieved — not a theatre which shall apply a subsidy to competing, by their own methods, with the unsubsidised theatres — but one which shall show what artistic results are possible under a wholly different system” (pp. xxii–xxiii). Notwithstanding, in a letter to Phillip Carr, 13 May 1908 (SMNT papers), Barker indicated that it might be a good idea to take a theatre for two or three years and entrust it to various managers for periods of three to six months each.

55 Executive Committee Minutes Book, entry for 25 November 1909, SMNT papers.

56 See, for example, Irving's, H. B. statement in Era, 16 April 1910Google Scholar, claiming that “there was so obvious a desire” on the part of the SMNT “to dispense with the cooperation of the members of our own and Shakespeare's calling,” and adding that he resented, “as I believe my father would have resented, the slight upon our calling.” In a speech in Liverpool, 14 October 1910 (quoted in Era, 22 October 1910), Irving suggested a cooperative management of actor-managers similar to Bourchier's original proposals.

57 Bourchier, , Some Reflections on the Drama — and Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell, 1911), p. 47Google Scholar.

58 Mask, 1, no. 11 (January 1909), 220.

59 Mask, 3, nos. 7–9 (January 1911), 134.

60 Mask, 3, nos. 7–9 (January 1911), 134.

61 Era, 19 March 1910. The correspondence between Bond and Philip Carr and Robert Donald of the SMNT Executive Committee is preserved in the SMNT papers.

62 Since Shakespearean production was constitutionally linked to the National Theatre movement through the charter of the SMNT, the battle for institutional dominance over the theatre industry was often fought through rival styles of producing Shakespeare. Just as Tree was suspicious of William Poel and his Elizabethanist simplicity, he was suspicious of Granville-Barker's modernist experiments in Shakespeare productions at the Savoy in 1912. Tree wrote his wife from Marienbad: “As to Barker's season at the Savoy … it is of course an attempt to seize the Shakespeare machine, and I am afraid that some of our friends on the National Theatre scheme are behind him” (quoted in Pearson, Beerbohm Tree, p. 159). In a later letter, Tree wrote: “I think that Barker is probably being backed up by some of the Shakespeare Committee, who are naturally jealous of the national work I have done. — But I will have no nonsense and shall cut myself adrift from them publicly and start the thing myself if I find any knavish tricks. — I have behaved most loyally throughout” (quoted in Pearson, Beerbohm Tree, p. 159). While we may question Tree's loyalty based on his repeated behavior behind the closed doors of the SMNT Executive Committee, Tree perhaps had some grounds in seeing Barker's experiments as a threat. The Daily Herald certainly saw the potential of Barker's style of production and system of management, observing on 2 December 1912: “Many have been the voices raised in support of a National Shakespeare Theatre. Under present conditions this attempt is for many reasons doomed to failure. But have we not here, in the Savoy Shakespeare, many, if not most, of the essentials of the larger and more ambitious scheme? Is not the theatre suitable, the position central? Are not Granville Barker, his actors, artists and helpers capable of doing practically all that was desired?” Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that Barker considered his Savoy management just such a nucleus for a scheme to parallel or rival the hapless SMNT; in an interview with Arthur Machen in the Evening News on 3 December 1912, Barker outlined his scheme for an “investment,” rather than a “speculation,” in theatre management with “a well laid and calculated plan of producing [Shakespeare's] plays year after year, with sufficient capital to cover a five or seven year's campaign.”

63 Era, 15 April 1911.

64 Era, 22 July 1911.

65 Again, John Hare took it upon himself to respond to Tree's assertion in print: “There is no taking for granted that all will continue well of its own accord. We cannot, for instance, be sure that Sir Herbert Tree's notable enterprise in the matter of Shakespearean production will fund a worthy successor — when a successor is needed, as must happen someday. People trust, in a haphazard sort of way, to the false saying that ‘the hour brings the man.’ Alas, no! There is one side to every history which tells a contrary and disastrous tale — of hours that arrived without the man, or when the man did arrive and had no means to do his work with” (Daily Chronicle, quoted in Era, 21 October 1911). Hare thus summarizes precisely the conflict between the actor-managers — the proponents of individualism — and the idea of an institutional, endowed theatre.

66 Lord Lytton, a member of the SMNT Executive Committee, wrote a letter to the Evening Standard in 1938 denying accusations that the SMNT had given any of its capital funds to Tree or had sought to lease or purchase His Majesty's Theatre, since the theatre was not a freehold (quoted in Whitworth, The Making of a National Theatre, p. 207). W. Bridges-Adams, in a letter of 21 May 1961 to Laurence Irving (H. B. Irving's son) blamed the SMNT for not buying His Majesty's when they could have: “The S.M.N.T. had funds enough, before 1914, to purchase His Majesty's as a going concern, had the terms of their trust allowed them to do anything so unholily practical. But their vision of bricks and mortar; of an institution from the word go; Pallas fully armed as it were; was their undoing” (Bridges-Adams Letter Book, p. 80).

67 Manuscript report of committees to the Executive Committee, 27 July 1910, SMNT papers.

68 Letter, labelled “Private and Confidential,” from Carr to Barker, c. 1910, SMNT papers.

69 Letter from George Heyer to Barker, 17 November 1910, SMNT papers.

70 Executive Committee Minutes Book, entry for 24 January 1911, SMNT papers.

70 Executive Committee Minutes Book (fair copy IG5A), entry for 17 November 1911, SMNT papers.

72 Printed pamphlet, marked “Private and Confidential,” Report from Special Committee to the Executive Committee, 19 July 1912, SMNT papers.

73 Ad Hoc Committee Minutes Book, entry for 5 July 1912, SMNT papers.

74 The academic backlash on the Executive Committee was headed by Chairman Israel Gollancz, whom Whitworth describes as a “master of intrigues … with every thread in his hands, and alone capable of unravelling the tangled skein when the right moment came” (The Making of a National Theatre, p. 44). The 1913 push to return to the statue plan was leaked to the press by Lady Gomme, a member of the Executive Committee, who claimed that Gollancz, “who appears to be the chief possessor of power, is, to put it mildly, not enthusiastic in admiration of the National Theatre idea” (Era, 1 February 1913). While Lady Gomme was officially censured by the Executive Committee, her information did serve to stir the forces of the theatrical profession in a renewed assault against the SMNT administration. One of the most interesting results of the incident was the forging of a curious alliance between Beerbohm Tree and his theatrical rival William Poel. Recollections about this relationship vary extremely from Bridges-Adams' statement that “William Poel … would as soon have come to terms with the devil as with Sir Herbert Tree,” to Barker's retrospective praise of Tree's having “welcomed the heretic Poel more than once to share in his Shakespeare Festival” (Nowell-Smith, , ed., Edwardian England, 1901–1914 [London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964], p. 399Google Scholar; and Granville-Barker, , Prefaces to Shakespeare[1946; rpt. in 4 vols., Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1965], I, 3.)Google Scholar As we have seen, Tree was hostile to Poel's proposals for a Shakespeare Theatre in 1905; but Poel shared with Tree the combination of protective pride for the theatrical profession and contempt for the academic establishment. As Poel was held outside of the SMNT Executive Committee, he became the most vocal member of the General Committee, writing innumerable letters to the press every time he believed himself disenfranchised from the proceedings. It was only natural that Poel and Tree, despite their irresolvable artistic differences, should become allies. Lady Gomme's communication with the press brought Poel and Tree together for a unified assault against the Executive Committee. A year later, in July, 1914, after it had been decided that the most the SMNT could muster in time for the tercentenary was an official celebration and not a National Theatre, Poel made a successful attempt to make sure the celebrations were in the hands of the theatrical profession, and moved that Tree head the Committee. (See Poel's letters to Era, 22 July 1914 and 29 July 1914, and later to Stage, 19 August 1915).

75 Executive Committee Minutes Book, entry for 3 June 1913, SMNT papers.

76 Executive Committee Minutes Book, entry for 24 June 1913, SMNT papers.

77 Executive Committee Minutes Book, 24 June 1913, SMNT papers.

78 A letter from Tree was read at a meeting of the General Committee of the SMNT, suggesting that “It would, of course, be fine if some permanent building of dignified proportions could add to the beauty of London and remind us of the importance of the theatre and the undying fame of the poet. But should sufficient capital for such a theatre might not be forthcoming, the funds could still be applied to the less ornamental but perhaps even more useful object of permanently endowing performances of classical plays in the metropolis and in the great provincial centres” (reprinted in Times, 16 May 1913).

79 Executive Committee Minutes Book, entry for 14 July 1913, SMNT papers. All subsequent quotations from this meeting are from this source.

80 During the first World War, the site was leased to the YMCA for the erection of a “Shakespeare Hut” for soldiers on leave. Elsom and Tomalin print the architect's plans from the SMNT papers for the YMCA building (as plate 11 in The History of the National Theatre) and mislabel it “proposed buildings for a Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre in Bloomsbury.”

81 Era, 25 March 1914.

82 Letter from Tree to Bourchier, 14 October 1916, in the Beerbohm Tree Collection, University of Bristol Theatre Collection.

83 In a letter to William Poel on 4 March 1916, Shaw gave his own account of the early years of the SMNT, in which he claimed that few of the participants ever thought the scheme itself would have any immediate value; rather, he claims, the Committee secretly hoped to create an imposing edifice that would embarrass the government into granting an operational subsidy (British Museum, Department of Manuscripts. This letter is scheduled for publication in Vol. 3 of Collected Letters, ed. Dan H. Laurence).

84 Work on this article was partially supported by a Summer Research Grant from the University of Pennsylvania.