His Second Wife

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This melodrama is much as others in plot with perhaps an extra dose of unpleasantness. After Arthur Beresford's wife Dora has become a drunkard and is the secret mistress of the willain, Sydney. She hates her husband and child and proposes to elope with Sydney to "shame" them. Sydney is merely after the fortune which he thinks her speedy demise-she has an aneurism of the heart- will make his own. At the moment of elopement Eva, the governess and the angel of the piece, gives Dora some of a sedative to restrain her. Sydney, coming in and finding Dora collapsed, takes a will she has made in his favour from her and gives her the rest of the sedative which kills her. Beresford, happily released from Dora, wants to marry Eva, but Eva thinking she has( though with the best motives) slain Dora, refuses, whereupon the ghost of Dora, comes between them and "smiles grimly". But Sydney's villainy is exposed by the testimony of the child, who saw him tampering with the sedative, and all is well. There is a most unpleasant scene in which Dora comes in drunk, p.p.20-24, but it hardly one which can be forbidden. Otherwise the play is only remarkable for being, in places, quite well written, in spite of its silly matter. Recommended for license. G. S. Street.