Beerbohm Tree

Posterity in the long run may remember Herbert Beerbohm Tree as the mortal half-brother of the Immortal Max but in shorter perspective be remains the quivering, preposterous life of the English stage - both as actor and manager - during the still vivid heyday of Shaw, Terry, Pinero, Wilde and the Ibsen era. Three helped ??jegitamise the birth of modern theater with his knighthood but no one more perfectly exemplified its brash, mannered, egocentric personality. Socially he was studiedly income, one of the master comics, but behind the deliberate, affected madness, Tree was also generous, inspired, irresistibly charming - and a bit genuinely cracked. He treated mankind as an extension, disordered, atrociously performed, of stage existence, and there are numberless examples and episodes that mirror the fantastic essence of his nature. Pearson, a self-appointed Boswell and personal friend, has recorded, almost verbatim, some of the most astonishing, hilarious monologues and ?? and has fashioned a book of wonderful fun. For an audience that takes its theater with sophistication. (Kirkus Reviews)