Foiled, or Australia Twenty Years Ago is a 1871 Australian stage play by Walter Cooper.
[3][4] According to Leslie Rees the play "was no less riotous and tropic-hued in plot than other melodramas of the period.
It contained... what was probably the first example of that breath-dispelling, blood-refrigerating type of incident so often copied by the silent films of two generations later, wherein a man is tied to a log in a timber mill and slowly directed towards the engine-driven saw, only to be saved from bisection in the nick of time.
"[5] The Sydney Evening News said "the characters are boldly sketched and well contrasted one with another, the dialogue is unstrained and well pointed, and the details of the plot are elaborated in a manner which produces an unflagging interest in the piece throughout its performance.
"[7] The Argus, reviewing a 1879 revival, said the play "is made up of stock materials and it ends with a stock sensation scene" but allowed "its construction is so much better than the average that there is no flagging in the interest and the episodal filling in is judiciously distributed.