Editing Herbert Beerbohm Tree (section)

==Theatre manager and leading roles==
[[Image:Herbert Beerbohm Tree Vanity Fair 1890.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Tree, as depicted in the pages of ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'' (1890)]]
In 1887, at age thirty-four, Tree took over the management of the [[Comedy Theatre]] in the [[West End theatre|West End]] of London. His first production was a successful run of the Russian revolutionary play ''The Red Lamp'' by W. Outram Tristram, in which Tree took the role of Demetrius.<ref name=dnbold/>

Later in the year, he became the manager of the prestigious [[Haymarket Theatre]]. Since the departure of [[Squire Bancroft|the Bancrofts]] in 1885, that theatre's reputation had suffered. Tree restored it during his tenure. He produced and appeared on stage in some thirty plays during the following decade. While popular farces and melodramas like ''[[Trilby (play)|Trilby]]'' anchored the repertoire (the production ran for an extraordinary 260 performances),<ref name=DNB/> Tree also encouraged the new drama, staging [[Maeterlinck]]'s ''The Intruder'' (1890), [[Ibsen]]'s ''[[An Enemy of the People]]'' (1893) and [[Oscar Wilde|Wilde]]'s ''[[A Woman of No Importance]]'' (1893), among others. He supported new playwrights by producing special "Monday night" performances of their new plays.

Tree also mounted critically acclaimed productions of ''[[Hamlet]]'' (1892), ''[[Henry IV, Part 1]]'' (1896) and ''[[The Merry Wives of Windsor]]'' (1889), establishing himself as a Shakespearean leading man.<ref name=DNB/> ''[[The Times]]'' thought his Hamlet a "notable success", but not everyone agreed: [[W. S. Gilbert]] said of it, "I never saw anything so funny in my life, and yet it was not in the least vulgar."<ref name=pearson>Pearson (1950), p. 214</ref>{{refn|''The Manchester Guardian'' (obituary notice) attributed the joke to Tree's half-brother Max Beerbohm. [[George Bernard Shaw|Bernard Shaw]] believed that Tree had made up the joke himself and fathered it on Gilbert.<ref>Pearson, p. 215</ref>|group= n}} His Haymarket seasons were broken by visits to the United States in January 1895 and November 1896, and occasional visits to the provinces.<ref name=dnbold/>

With the profits he had accumulated at the Haymarket, Tree helped finance the rebuilding of [[Her Majesty's Theatre]] in grand Louis XV style. He owned and managed it.<ref name=times/> He lived in the theatre for two decades following its completion in 1897 until his death in 1917. For his personal use, he had a banqueting hall and living room installed in the massive, central, square French-style dome.<ref name=EH>{{NHLE |num=1357090 |desc=Her Majesty's Theatre |access-date=28 April 2007}}</ref> The theatre historian [[W. J. MacQueen-Pope]], wrote of the theatre, 
<blockquote>Simply to go to His Majesty's was a thrill. As soon as you entered it, you sensed the atmosphere ... In Tree's time it was graced by footmen in powdered wigs and liveries ... Everything was in tone, nothing cheap, nothing vulgar.<ref>Macqueen-Pope, p. 35 (Port Washington: Kennikate Press ed., 1970), ''quoted'' in Schulz, David. "The Architecture of Conspicuous Consumption: Property, Class, and Display at Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Her Majesty's Theatre", ''Theatre Journal'', Vol. 51, No. 3, Theatre and Capital (October 1999), pp. 231–50</ref></blockquote>Tree opened his theatre in 1897 during [[Victoria of the United Kingdom|Queen Victoria]]'s Diamond Jubilee year, associating the new structure with an imperial celebration.<ref>Schulz, David. "The Architecture of Conspicuous Consumption: Property, Class, and Display at Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Her Majesty's Theatre", ''Theatre Journal'', Vol. 51, No. 3, Theatre and Capital (October 1999), pp. 231–50</ref>

Over the next two decades, Tree staged approximately sixty plays there, programming a repertory at least as varied as he had at the Haymarket. His first production at Her Majesty's was a dramatisation of [[Gilbert Parker]]'s ''[[The Seats of the Mighty]]''. Tree mounted new plays by prominent British playwrights, such as ''Carnac Sahib'' (1899) by [[Henry Arthur Jones]]. His productions were exceptionally profitable; they were famous, most of all, for their elaborate and often spectacular scenery and effects. Unlike some other famous [[actor-manager]]s, Tree engaged the best actors available to join his company and hired the best designers and composers for the plays with [[incidental music]]. His productions starred such noted actors as [[Constance Collier]], [[Ellen Terry]], [[Madge Kendal]], [[Winifred Emery]], [[Julia Neilson]], [[Violet Vanbrugh]], [[Oscar Asche]], [[Arthur Bourchier]], and [[Lewis Waller]].<ref name=DNB/>

Tree often starred in the theatre's dramatisations of popular nineteenth-century novels, such as [[Sydney Grundy]]'s adaptation of [[Alexandre Dumas, père|Dumas]]'s ''Musketeers'' (1898); [[Tolstoy]]'s ''Resurrection'' (1903); [[Dickens]]'s ''Oliver Twist'' (1905), ''The Mystery of Edwin Drood'' (1908) and ''David Copperfield'' (1914); and Morton's dramatisation of [[Thackeray]]'s ''[[The Newcomes]]'', called ''[[Colonel Newcome (play)|Colonel Newcome]]'' (1906), among others. Tree staged many contemporary verse dramas by [[Stephen Phillips]] and others, including ''Herod'' (1900), ''Ulysses'' (1902), ''Nero'' (1906) and ''Faust'' (1908). Adaptations of classic foreign plays included ''Beethoven'' by [[Louis N. Parker|Louis Parker]], an adaptation of the play by [[René Fauchois]] (1909); ''A Russian Tragedy'', an English version by Henry Hamilton of the play by [[Adolph Glass]] (1909); and ''The Perfect Gentleman'' by [[W. Somerset Maugham]], an adaptation of the classic [[Molière]] play, ''Le bourgeois gentilhomme'' (1913). The classical repertory included such works as ''The School for Scandal'' (1909). Tree also programmed popular melodramas, farces, romantic comedies and premieres, such as [[George Bernard Shaw|Bernard Shaw]]'s ''[[Pygmalion (play)|Pygmalion]]'', in 1914. Tree played [[Pygmalion (play)|Henry Higgins]] opposite the Eliza of [[Mrs Patrick Campbell]]. The actor [[John Gielgud]] wrote, "Rehearsing ''Pygmalion'' with Tree she must have been impossible. They were both such eccentrics. They kept ordering each other out of the theatre with Shaw in the middle, trying to cope with them."<ref>Gielgud, p. 67</ref> Tree also took his productions on tour to the United States many times. In 1907 he visited Berlin's Royal Opera House at the invitation of [[Wilhelm II, German Emperor|Kaiser Wilhelm II]]. Gilbert remarked that Tree had been invited by the Kaiser "with the malignant motive of showing the Germans what impostors we all are."<ref name=pearson/>