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

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.