MR TREE ON SHAKESPEARE

Evening Star, Issue 11662, 24 September 1901, Page 3

MR TREE ON SHAKESPEARE

In a recent number of the 'Fortnightly Review' appears Mr Beerbohm Tree's address, delivered a month ago before the Oxford Debating Society, on the subject of 'The Staging of Shakespeare,' The position adopted ny Mr Tree regarding this question is tolerably well known, but it is fitting, perhaps, that his ideas should be set forth in full detail, and accorded a prominence not to be obtained by a mere passing reference published in the corner of some daily paper. Among the facts enumerated is one to which the writer points with pardonable pride—namely, that during his three years' occupancy of Her Majesty's 242,000 people paid to witness 'Julius Caesar,' over 170,000 to see 'King John,' and nearly 220,000 to be present at his revival of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' These figures offer a sufficiently eloquent testimony to the readiness displayed by the public'to endorse Mr Tree's view of what a Shakespearian production should be. AVhat that view is he clearly indicates in the address alluded to. " Great poetry is not written for ,the few elected of themselves it must be a living force, or. it must be respectfully relegated to the dingy shelves of the great unheard—the little read. Is Shakespeare living, or is ho dead? That is the question. Is he to be, or not to be? If he is to be, his being must be of our time—that is to say, we must look at him with the eyes, and we must listen to him with the ears of our own generation. And it is surely the greatest tribnte to his genius that we shall claim his work as belonging no less to our time than to his own." Or, again : "It is not too much to claim that the public taste lies in tie direction of the method in which Shakespeare has been presented of late years by the chief metropolitan managers. And I feel bound to state—if only.for th'c.'purpose'of encouraging others to put Shakespeare on the stage as magnificently as they can afford—that no single one of my Shakespearian productions has been unattended by a substantial pecuniary reward."