The opening of Beerbohm Tree's new theatre, Her Majesty's, on April 28, 1897, was a major social event, but hardly a landmark in stage history. Desmond MacCarthy felt that “Her Majesty's … frankly forewent the claim to be the last word in dramatic art” in favour of “the grandly, lavishly popular in that line.” The art critic of the Weekly Sun suggested that it had foregone dramatic art altogether as it had been traditionally understood. “This is the age of the biograph and the cinematograph,” he wrote. “Mr. Tree's object was to give us living pictures which talked.”