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Strange Images of Death: Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Macbeth, 1911

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Michael Mullin
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Extract

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853–1917) is a perplexing figure in Shakespearean stage history. At the turn of the century and in the decade following, he was esteemed as Irving's successor, the pre-eminent Shakespearean actor and producer in Great Britain. That reputation rested largely on his great “revivals” of Shakespeare at Her (later His) Majesty's Theatre. Highly regarded in his own day, Tree is now commonly thought of as a somewhat ludicrous impressario: “He was at heart a comedian, a character actor, a make-up artist specializing in the eccentric,” writes Charles H. Shattuck in his authoritative history of Shakespeare in performance. And, Shattuck continues, Tree's staging is remembered chiefly for its “tricky business, tableaux and dumbshows,” the kind of elaborate, literal-minded stage “illustration” which put a barge onstage in Antony and Cleopatra and live rabbits in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is easy to laugh at Tree's excesses, as many have, because so little is known about his achievements. For until 1974 the Tree promptbooks and theatre records (scrapbooks with complete newspaper reviews) were controlled by the Tree Estate, and were therefore all but inaccessible to scholars. Lacking the direct evidence of reviews and promptbooks, theatre historians have relied on the harsh judgments of Tree's enemies—chiefly George Bernard Shaw and A. B. Walkley of the London Times—who denounced Tree in favor of William Poel, Gordon Craig, and Harley Granville-Barker.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , November 1976 , pp. 125 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1976

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References

1 Tree began his career as an amateur actor at the Prince of Wales Theatre (1880–87), then moved on to become manager at the Haymarket in 1887, and ten years later at Her Majesty's, re-named His Majesty's in 1911. For further information about Tree, see Pearson, Hesketh, Beerbohm Tree (London, 1956)Google Scholar; the obituary notices in the Daily Telegraph (3, 4 July 1917) and the Times (3 July 1917); and the Tree entries in the Dictionary of National Biography, 1912–21 (Oxford, 1927), pp. 531–533Google Scholar; the Oxford Companion to the Theatre, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1957), pp. 799–800Google Scholar, and l' Enciclopedia dello spettacolo (Rome, 1962), IX, 1105–1106Google Scholar.

2 “Shakespeare in Performance,” in the Riverside Shakespeare (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), p. 1811Google Scholar.

3 For permission to examine the Macbeth promptbooks and reviews, I wish to thank the Tree Estate. For helping me secure that permission, I thank Mr. George Nash and Mr. Tony Latham of the Enthoven Theatre Collection. This research was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1973) and the University of Illinois (1973, 1974).

4 Shattuck, “Shakespeare in Performance,” p. 1811.

5 Tree's stage painter Harker, Joseph, Studio and Stage (London, 1924), pp. 175–176Google Scholar, tells how he showed Tree that “apart from their obvious ugliness,” Craig's designs were unsuitable because too tall for His Majesty's stage. Pearson, Tree, p. 215, says Craig tried to take over the entire production, and was dismissed for his presumption. Craig, Edward Gordon, Index to the Story of My Days (New York, 1957), pp. 245–252, 254–63Google Scholar, describes the disagreement from his own point of view. And Trewin, J. C., Shakespeare on the English Stage: 1900–1964 (London, 1964), p. 43Google Scholar, reports that Craig brought suit for damages against Tree for destroying the models.

6 Rowell, George, “Tree's Shakespeare Festivals (1905–1913),” Theatre Notebook, 29 (1975), 74–81Google Scholar.

7 Trewin, , Shakespeare on the English Stage, pp. 42–44Google Scholar, and Bartholomeusz, Dennis, Macbeth and the Players (Cambridge, 1969), p. 214Google Scholar, both accepted Walkley's judgment that beautiful stage effects had robbed the play of terror because, wrote Bartholomeusz, Tree permitted “the pre-Raphaelite cult of beauty … to assert itself without restraint.”

8 The complete cuts: I, ii, 25–42, 47–48; iii, 11–21, 42b–47a, 93b–104, 111b–116a; iv, 26–27a, 44; v, 56–58a; vi, in toto; II, i, 5a, 45a; ii, 6b–8a; iii, 6b–12, 26–42, 58–60a; 124–129, 135b–137a, 140b–141a; iv, in toto; III, i, 3b–10, 21, 33–34a, 44b, 50b–56a, 78b–83a, 90b–107a, 120–124, 131b–132; ii, 10–11b, 32–33; iii, in toto; iv, 22, 28–30a, 33b–36, 41–43a, 62b–65a, 75, 81b–82a, 91b 108–116b; v, in toto; vi, in toto; IV, i, 6–11, 14–20, 26–29, 33–34, 50–60a, 78, 95–100a, 120b–121, 125b–143, 155b–156; ii, 18b–22a; iii, 4b–10, 12–159a, 235b–240; V, i, 16b, 31b–33, 56b–58, 66–70, 73–76; ii, in toto; iii, 15b–17a, 61–62; iv, 16b–21; v, 5–7a; vii, 1–13, 20b–29; viii, 1–3a, 23–27, 32b–33a; ix, 1–19, 21–24, 26–41. Here and elsewhere I follow the scene numbering and lineation of the Arden edition, ed. Kenneth Muir (London, 1951).

9 Licensed Victuallers' Gazette, 14 September 1911, italics sicGoogle Scholar.

10 The “promptbook,” described by Shattuck, Charles H., The Shakespeare Promptbooks (Urbana, Ill., 1965), p. 262Google Scholar, Nos. 122 and 123, exists in two slightly different versions, which, for simplicity, I here cite and quote as one. The first (Shattuck's No. 122) belonged to Cecil King the stage manager, and it records working ideas, some of them scratched out, as well as the actual production. The second (Shattuck's No. 123) is a fair copy of the first which has been, in turn, re-marked and added to. Although unsigned, it contains the same handwriting as the first, and has an elaborate monogram “C.K.” doodled on the verso of one page, suggesting that it also belonged to the stage manager King. Many verbal sketches and line drawings make it an exceptionally fine record of the performance.

11 So Pearson, Tree, p. 215, describes this scene. He had a walk-on part, and he writes as an eyewitness.

12 The promptbook is quite specific, calling for “Wind,” “Thunder,” and “Blue [or Red] PS fly” (i.e., a flash of light from the flies above, stage left), after I, iii, 35 (Macbeth's entry), 50, 64, 68 (the Witches' prophetic greetings), and 78 (their exit).

13 Licensed Victuallers' Gazette, 14 September 1911Google Scholar.

14 The intermittent “syren blast” (as the promptbook spells it) came as first Lady Macbeth and then Macbeth stood in the courtyard (II, ii). Like the owl, the crickets, and the voice crying “Sleep no more!” its startling sound made stealth and silence all the more oppressive.

15 The promptbook shows that Hecate entered and exited through a trap beneath the cauldron.

16 So said the reviewer for The Sportsman (6 September 1911), who thought this scene Tree's “best passage.”

17 Tree's interest in Maeterlinck is confirmed by the Dictionary of National Biography: 1912–21, pp. 531–33.

18 Responding to the setting as the characters did, reviewers repeatedly wrote of an atmosphere of dread—“massive, sombre, heavily fraught with horror,” said the Liverpool Daily Post (6 September 1911), in which the Castle with its “frowning masonry,” like the Door and the Stair, seemed to take on emotional values.

19 A sketch in the promptbook shows her thus poised atop the steps, as Macbeth stands stunned in the courtyard below.

20 Whether or not the Ghost was actually visible to the audience is unclear. The promptbook says that “he sees Ghost in audience.” The Liverpool Daily Post (6 September 1911) wrote that “the half-delirious Macbeth conjures up the ghostly Banquo over the heads of the audience.” The Daily Chronicle (7 September 1911) and the Pall Mall Gazette (6 September 1911) confirmed this report without explaining if they saw the Ghost when Macbeth did.

21 The Standard (6 September 1911) and Lady's Pictorial (6 September 1911) confirmed this feeling of fear for Violet Vanbrugh's physical safety.

22 Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1969), p. 292Google Scholar.