The Wife With Two Husbands

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

An average melodrama. Constance’s husband, john, is reported dead at the front, and ten months later she marries the villain, Norris, for the sake of her child, Norah. Norris’s object is to get possession of Norah, who is to inherit her maternal grandfather’s fortune. He had previously seduced John’s sister, Kate, who has a child by him but who subsequently married the good man who had always loved her. John of course turns up, this time on the wedding day, so that the audience has the satisfaction of knowing that the marriage with the villain was not consummated. He upbraids his wife and goes away. So does his wife, with her child, but Norris pursues them to kidnap the latter. This he is in the act of accomplishing when his accomplice not liking violence to women and children like the good ruffian in ‘the babes in the wood’ slays him. Then Norah, dying, joins Constance’s and John’s hands. Given the ordinary plot, there is no excessive unpleasantness of dialogue or action. Recommended for license, G. S. Street

Researcher's Summary:

Although The Stage, 27 January 1916, already announced the ‘Production Shortly of Oswald Cray’s Latest “The Wife With Two Husbands” by C. Vernon Proctor’ it was not performed until July 1916 (Proctor’s ‘The Unmarried Mother’, also in this database, was playing at the Grand, Brighton in the week envisaged in the licence application). It then toured until February 1917. In The Stage, 1 February 1917, Oswald Cray advertised ‘Back To Wife And Blighty’, ‘The Successful Drama of the moment’, by C. Vernon Proctor. Allardyce Nicoll, ‘British Drama 1900-1930’, notes that ‘Back To Wife and Blighty’ was the same play as ‘The Wife with Two Husbands’. Certainly the brief accounts of the plot of ‘Back To Wife and Blighty’ in the Bradford Weekly Telegraph, Friday 12 October 1917, and the Western Daily Press, 28 October 1919, are not inconsistent with that of ‘The Wife with Two Husbands’ although they do not mention the actions of the villains which feature prominently in accounts of the latter. Also the Western Daily Press, 28 October 1919, mentions a ‘bogus telegram’ reporting the hero’s death in ‘Back to Wife and Blighty’ whereas the telegram in ‘The Wife with Two Husbands’ seems to be a genuine mistake. Performances of ‘Back to Wife and Blighty’ have been identified from August 1917 and are listed below, although the performances at Plymouth in June 1918 and Wallingford in September 1919 were as ‘The Wife with Two Husbands’. This play by Proctor was performed alongside ‘The Unmarried Mother’, also by him as mentioned above. They were performed in successive weeks at the Pavilion, Pontnewynydd in August 1917; may have been performed around the same time at the Theatre Royal, Stratford in October 1917; and shared a week at Weston-super-Mare in November 1917. Gaps in the performance history of ‘The Wife with Two Husbands’ / ‘Back to Wife and Blighty’ may be attributable to other plays being staged by Oswald Cray’s company instead. Proctor’s ‘The Wife with Two Husbands’ was among plays acquired by Ben Fuller for production in Australia (The Stage, 29 April 1920). The Era, 20 February 1935, reported intriguingly, ‘Paul Brann’s famous Marionette Theatre show opens on Monday next, at the Arts Theatre Club, for a two weeks’ season. The first full-length play will be “The Wife with Two Husbands,” for adults only. Vocal effects are being supplied by Miss Bardsley, Thomas Dance, and Reginald Thurgood’. Surely no connection with Proctor’s play!