Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/559

  1903), Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (24 January 1905), Fagin in Oliver Twist (10 July 1905), Colonel Newcome in a play of that name (29 May 1906), Nero (25 June 1906), Mark Antony in Antony and Cleopatra (27 December 1906), Shylock (4 April 1908), Mephistopheles (5 September 1908), Sir Peter Teazle (7 April 1909), Ludwig von Beethoven in Beethoven (26 November 1909), Cardinal Wolsey in King Henry VIII (1 September 1910), Macbeth (5 September 1911), and Count Frithiof in The War God (8 November 1911).

During the closing period of Tree's activities the natural comedian was obscured by his serious ambition to rank as a great tragedian and a producer in the grand manner. There were interludes of condescension towards fashionable romantic drama. There was one notable essay in modernism in the production of G. B. Shaw's Pygmalion in 1914. But the impression which he finally left on the public mind was the result of his later productions of Shakespeare and of his attempt to revive poetic drama (Herod, 1900; Ulysses, 1902; Nero, 1906) under the influence of Stephen Phillips [q.v.]. The exuberant vitality which in Tree's earlier work had found a natural outlet in a fanciful elaboration of characters like Paul Demetrius in The Red Lamp, or the Rev. Robert Spalding in The Private Secretary, demanded in later life an ampler and more dignified expression. He fell in love with magnificence, and it was a magnificence that ran to big designs packed with extravagant detail. His stage arrangements, as in the forum scene in Julius Caesar or in the costly pageant of Henry VIII, were, like his personal performances, too elaborate and too full of invention and ingenuity to serve the purpose of tragedy, for which they lacked the necessary simplicity.

It was natural for a producer with an increasing passion for emphatic splendour to fall under the spell of Stephen Phillips, who was greeted by many serious critics of the time as the founder of a modern poetic drama. It was even more natural that he should take to its extravagant limit a method of producing Shakespeare which insisted on a sumptuous illustration of the author's lines, as close and as detailed as the arts of the scene painter and stage carpenter could compass. Tree lived to see a reaction in the art of production, which swung violently back from the method of illustrative realism to the method of suggestive decoration, and he had to encounter a good deal of hostility from younger men. But, in estimating his achievement, it must be remembered that the movement which he led to such clamant extremes began as a protest against the tawdriness and indifference of an earlier generation of producers, and that he did succeed in keeping an open house for Shakespeare in London by striking the popular imagination with splendid spectacle mounted with convincing enthusiasm and ability. The climax was his celebrated performance of Mark Antony in the forum scene, where all the complicated gestures and ingenious pantomime of his craft were displayed at leisure. In 1905 Tree began a series of Shakespeare festivals, repeated annually and culminating in 1910–1911 with an entire season during which only plays by Shakespeare were performed. His last professional adventure was a visit to Los Angeles in 1915 in fulfilment of a contract with a film company. He was in America for the greater part of 1915 and 1916. He returned to England in 1917 and died quite suddenly in London on 2 July of that year.

Tree's devotion to his profession and natural generosity of disposition prompted him to take a leading part in all that concerned its dignity and well-being. In 1904 he founded the Academy of Dramatic Art, and on the death of Sir Henry Irving he was elected president of the Theatrical Managers' Association. He was a trustee and vice-president of the Actors' Benevolent Fund and president of the Actors' Association. He was knighted by King Edward in 1909, having in 1907 received the order of the Crown from the German Emperor, and the order of the Crown of Italy from the King of Italy.

Tree was the author of several books, in which an enthusiastic personality may be seen at issue with an unpractised pen: Some Interesting Fallacies of the Modern Stage (1893), An Essay on the Imaginative Faculty (1893), Thoughts and After-Thoughts (1913), Nothing Matters (1917). He also wrote a one-act play entitled Six-and-Eightpence, produced in 1884. In 1882 he married Maud, daughter of William Holt, by whom he had three daughters.

There is a pencil-drawing of Tree by the Duchess of Rutland, executed in 1891, and a charcoal-drawing by J. S. Sargent.

 TUCKER, ALFRED ROBERT (1849–1914), missionary bishop of Uganda, was born at Woolwich 1 April 1849, the second son of Edward Tucker, artist, of  533