His Mother's Rosary

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This play is absolutely chaos and I cannot imagine any audience standing the confusion as it is now arranged. It is fortunately not the business of the Office to reconstruct it, but for the sake of disentangling the plot I make out that Act IV should come first and Act I last. So re-arranged one gathers that the plot is as follows: Mrs Shepherd, the wife of a village doctor, is an innocent bigamist, her first husband, whom she thought dead, being alive. He was also, before that, the husband of Mrs Craven, her enemy, who wants to marry the rectory. Very well: Mrs Craven makes him denounce Mrs Shepherd and of the latter's sons, one, now supposed illegitimate, enlists in the navy, in which the other son, a blackguard more or less, is an officer: they are both in love with the rector's daughter. There is a fight at sea, and son No 1 distinguishes himself and by coincidence is saved from dying of his wounds by the doctor, his step-father, and, by the way, his mother's rosary, by stopping a shot, had previously saved his life. Then they all get back to the village and eventually the truth comes out and all is well. The scenes on board ship are not ill done, and though they contain a little of the inevitable comic relief it is not offensive to the King's uniform. Otherwise the piece is harmless… Recommended for license. G. S. Street.