TREE, SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM Eng lish actor and manager, was born in London, on Dec. 17, 1853, the son of Julius Beerbohm, a London merchant of German par entage; his half-brother, Max Beerbohm (q.v.) became well known as a writer and caricaturist. Taking the stage name of Beerbohm Tree he made his first professional appearance in Lon don in 1876. He made a striking success in 1884 as the curate in The Private Secretary. In September 1887 he became lessee and manager of the Haymarket theatre, London, where his representations of melodramatic "character" parts, as in Jim the Penman, The Red Lamp and A Man's Shadow, were highly suc cessful. He played in many modern dramas, such as H. A. Jones's Dancing Girl, but also in romantic parts such as Gringoire, and in the production of so essentially a literary play as Henley's Beau Austin; and in classic parts his ability as a comedian was shown in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which he played Falstaff, and as a tragedian in Hamlet; his presentations of Shakespeare carried further forward the improvements in staging inaugurated at the Lyceum under Irving. In 1897 Tree moved to the new Her
Majesty's theatre, where his chief successes were in Stephen Phillips's poetical dramas, and in his splendid revivals of Shake speare (especially Richard II. and the Merchant of Venice). The magnificence of the mounting, the originality and research shown in the "business" of his productions, and his own versatility in so many different types of character, made his management memorable in the history of the London stage. In the year 1907 Tree established a school of dramatic art, for the training of actors, in London ; and in this and other ways he was prominent in forwarding the interests of the stage. He was knighted in 1909. In 1913 he published Thoughts and Afterthoughts, a book of essays. Tree died in London on July 2, 1917.