Tree, Sir Herbert (Draper) Beerbohm 1853-1917
English actor-manager

He was born in London, and was the half-brother of Sir Max Beerbohm. Following a commercial education in Germany, he became an actor and scored his first success as Spalding in The Private Secretary (1884). He took over the Haymarket Theatre (1887) and, with the box-office success of Trilby (1894), he built His Majesty's Theatre (1897), where he rivalled Henry Irving's Shakespearean productions at the Lyceum. He founded the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1904, where one of his major successes was the first production of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1914). A great character actor, he excelled in roles such as Svengali, Falstaff, Hamlet, Fagin, Shylock, Malvolio and Micawber. His wife, (Helen) Maud Holt (1864-1937), whom he married in 1883, was also an accomplished actress, and directed His Majesty's Theatre from 1902; she is best remembered for the film The Private Life of Henry VIII (1932).

Bibliography: Max Beerbohm, Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1920)