How many there are! They fear the dark! They crowd together! They
cry! and they go quick! They are at the crossroads, and they know
not which way to turn!... Now they are still.... Shepherd! why do
they not speak any more?

THE SHEPHERD (_who is out of sight_)
"Because it is no longer the road to the fold.

YNIOLD
"Where are they going?--Shepherd! Shepherd!--where are they
going?--Where are they going to sleep to-night? Oh! oh! it is too
dark!--I am going to tell something to somebody."

Always the setting, the accessories, reflect and underscore the inner
movement of the drama, and always with arresting and intense effect.

It tempts one to extravagant praise, this heart-shaking and lovely
drama; this _vieille et triste légende de la forêt_, with its
indescribable glamour, its affecting sincerity, its restraint, its
exquisite and unflagging simplicity. The hesitant and melancholy
personages who invest its scenes--Mélisande, timid, naïve, child-like,
wistful, mercurial, infinitely pathetic; Pelléas, dream-filled, ardent,
yet honorable in his passion; old Arkël, wise, gentle, and resigned; the
tragic and brooding figure of Golaud; Little Yniold, artless and
pitiful, a figure impossible anywhere save in Maeterlinck; the grave and
simple diction, at times direct and homely in phrasing and imagery, at
times rapturous, subtle, and evasive; the haunting _mise-en-scène_: the
dim forest, the fountain in the park, the luminous and fragrant
nightfall, the occasional glimpses, sombre and threatening, of the sea,
the silent and gloomy castle,--all these unite to form a dramatic and