MR TREE ON SHAKESPEARE

Lake County Press, Issue 982, 3 October 1901, Page 2

MR TREE ON SHAKESPEARE

In a recent number of the ‘Fortnightly Review' appears Mr Beerbobra Tree’s address, delivered a month ago before the Oxford Debating Society, on the subject of The Staging of Shakespeare.' The position adopted dv Mr Tree regarding this question is tolerably well known, but it is fitting, perhaps. that bis ideas should be set forth in full detail, and accorded a prominence not to ho obtained by a mere passing reference published in the corner of some daily paper. Among ibc facts enumerated is one to which the writer point- with pardonable pride—namely, 'hat during bis three years occupancy of Her Ma jesty's 242.000 people paid to witness * Julius (Ansar,’ 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 tin- readiness displayed by the public to endorse Mr Tree's view of what a Shakespearian production should be. What 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 tead. Is Shakespeare living, or is he dead'.' That is the question. Is he to be, or not to be’.' If be is to be. bis being must be of our time—that is to say. we must- look at. him with the eyes, and " e must listen to him with the ears: of our own generation. And it is surely the greatest tribute 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 the direction of the method in which Shakespeare habeen presented of late years by the chief metropolitan managers. And I feel bound to state —if only for the purpose of encouraging others to put Shakespeare on the stage as magnificently its they can afford—that no single one of my Shakespearian productions has been unattended by a- substantial pecuniary reward.”