Lost Dumas play discovered

A retired professor from Quebec has discovered a lost five-act play written by Alexandre Dumas, the 19th-century French author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, a Canadian university magazine says.

French studies professor Reginald Hamel found the play, titled The Gold Thieves, in the archives of France's National Library in Paris two years ago, said Forum Express, a University of Montreal magazine. French publisher Honore Champion will publish the play.

The Gold Thieves, which recounts the exploits of a group of British thieves in Australia, was "inspired by a novel written by one of Dumas' mistresses, Celeste de Chabrillan, in 1857", said Hamel.

"You recognise in each phrase, in each scene, in each act the Dumasian way of cutting up a text written in prose and making it a theatre piece," said Hamel, a Dumas expert who in 2002 published a dictionary that analyses characters and scenes from Dumas' books.

Dumas, who also wrote Queen Margot and The Black Tulip, lived between 1802-1870.