PABISLSN THEATRICALS.
M. Arthur de Beauplan, a dramatist of some eight years' standing, who has hitherto chiefly shown forth as a collaborateur with other authors, has furnished the Theatre Francais with a three-act comedy, entitled Les Pieges Dories, which was produced last Monday. The moral, by no means new, is dizected against the mania for speculation. A young avocet, who is rising in his profession, loses his money on the Bourse, and compromises his legal reputation in the attempt to make sudden gains for the support of his wife's extravagance; and the lady herself, who speculates a little on her own account, receives dishonourable offers from her agent de change. M. Bres3ant, Mademoiselle Augustin Brohan, and Mademoiselle Favart, are among the performers in the piece. The attempt of M. Alexandre Dumas to make the Porte St. Martin a field for the revival of antique drama seems to have failed. His trilogy, L'Orestie, is already withdrawn. At the Ambigu Comique, there is a new drama, in seven acts, by MM. A. Brisebarre and Eugene Nus, which might have been founded on some criminal record of modern England. A young wife, married to a ruffian who only wooed her for money, is exposed to the brutality of her husband and the insolence of the female servant, his avowed mistress. The discovery that the husband has murdered a child that was the result of his illicit amour, converts the mistress into an ally of the wife ; where- upon an attempt is made to get rid of the latter by poison. The old ex- pedient of substituting a narcotic for a deadly potion is adopted here; and the resuscitated wife is enabled to leave the tomb in which she has been interred, and take unto herself a better partner, the first having blown out his brains. Surely this work, which is entitled La Servante, contains crime enough even for seven acts.
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