Herbert Beerbohm Tree - Reputation and Last Years

Reputation and Last Years

According to Tree's biographers, critics and audiences considered Tree to be the best character actor of his day. He himself detested the term "character actor": "All acting should be character acting. What is Shylock? A character part. What are Macbeth and Richard III but character parts? What are Hamlet, Iago, or Othello but character parts? What are Brutus, Mark Antony and Cassius? Such characters as Romeo of course require the appearance of youth and those graces of person which will alone commend the Mantuan lover to his Juliet. But even here, an audience will be more moved by the intellectual suggestion of a Jean de Reszke, than by the inadequate posturings of a youthful nincompoop." He was an exceptional mime and demonstrated unrivalled versatility in creating individual characterisations. He was particularly praised for his vivid characters with eccentric and idiosyncratic and habits, including Fagin, Falstaff and Svengali. His diligent preparation and attention to detail in make-up, gesture, body position and facial expression allowed him to inhabit these roles. He used his expressive eyes to project such varied emotions as "the dreamy languor of Hamlet during his moments of reflection and the baleful hatred of Shylock towards his persecutors to the nervous fear of Richard II during his surrender at Flint Castle. His Malvolio was a swaggering and conceited fool, King John a superstitious and deceitful coward, and Macbeth a neurotic and self-torturing monarch." The literary critic Desmond MacCarthy wrote of Tree: "He could make himself look like Falstaff. He understood and revelled in the character of Falstaff, but his performance lacked fundamental force. Hence the contradiction in his acting: his performance as a whole often fell short of high excellence, yet these same impersonations were lit by insight and masterly strokes of interpretation, which made the spectator feel that he was watching the performance of the most imaginative of living actors."

In the great tragic Shakespearean roles, however, Tree was overshadowed by earlier actors such as Henry Irving. During performance, Tree allowed inspiration to suggest to him appropriate stage business, which sometimes lead to inconsistent interpretations in his portrayals of a role. The Manchester Guardian wrote, "The wonderful thing about him was his amazing versatility, and there was an intellectual virility, an untiring earnestness about the man, which was irresistibly stimulating." Tree's versatility, however, was a two edged sword: he quickly tired of characters after a brief run and sought to add business and details to the part to sustain his interest, which led to further character inconsistencies in long runs. Tree's voice was described as thin, and he was sometimes criticized for struggling to project it in a manner that made his performance seem unnatural. In the last decade of his career, Tree's technique was seen as mannered and old fashioned. His spectacles, too, in comparison with the experimental methods of Poel and other producers, seemed outdated, although Tree responded to his critics by noting that his productions remained profitable and well attended.