Out Of Hell

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

Act II is missing from this play. As the play is intelligible without it, however the case may be merely one of wrong enumeration. It is a well-written and by no means uninteresting play of the war. On the evening of his departure for the front, Arthur Ford has a farewell talk with his mother, in the course of which she speaks of her twin sister, who disappeared in Switzerland long years ago. In the next act Frau Hartzman is surprised, in her country town in Germany, by the entrance of an escaped prisoner from Ruhleben. It is Arthur Ford, and it comes out that she is his mother’s lost sister, and that her son, Carl, the image of Arthur, stole is uniform after his capture. Frau Hartzmann loses her lie in helping Arthur to escape from Germany. In the next act he is home with his mother, has lost her reason partly, and does not know him. It seems that Carl turned up and personated Arthur and when discovered threatened that Arthur would be shot in German; nevertheless she did her duty and gave him up (afterward we learn that for Arthur’s sake he was not shot but sent to Donnignton Hall) at the end of the act Mrs Ford recovers her memory and knows her son. Carl appears on his way home to Germany (now departed) and begs Mrs Ford’s pardon and she persuades Arthur not to fight him. Give the extreme improbability of the plot it is not a bad play; the dialogue, largely concerned with the rival claims of patriotism and personal love, is much better than the plot. Subject to the whole play having been sent in, it is recommended for license. G. S. Street