The Dreamers. By George H. R. Dabbs, M.D. (Silsbury Brothers,
Shanklin, Isle of Wight. 6d.)—Dr. Dabbs tells us that this is a new, and, he thinks, an original, play. He asks the judgment of the reading public upon it, the playgoing public being inaccessible. We have found it interesting, a quality which a printed play seldom has, and it may be dramatic ; of that, of course, it is difficult to judge. The dialogue might have to be retrenched here and there, but the situations are forcible. Act IV. ends with a fine scene, and Act V. could hardly fail, we should think, to bring down a house capable of judging. But Dr. Dabbs is probably right in thinking that the stage is practically out of his reach. If he had wished to attain a stage success, he should have constructed his play on very different lines. A prostitute in fine clothes, a profligate noble, if possible a debauched priest, with as near an approach to the profane as a tolerant censor will permit; that is the sort of thing that will run for five or six hundred nights. Dr. Dabbs is too literary and too decent.
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