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Pelleas et Mélisande

“Maeterlinck, it is true, filled his play with symbols, often to the point of naiveté”
(11)
“It is arguable that it was Maeterlinck more than anyone else who captured the
quintessence of Symbolism on the stage” (24)

Maurice Maeterlinck and the Making of Modern Theatre – McGuinness
(2000)

• The spaces are “the décor of the Symbolist fantasy landscape – dark
castles, deep caves, desolate islands” (128)
• “Trapped, lost, perpetually uprooted, confined yet roaming indefinitely”
(131) – the landscape is “as much a reflection of an internal condition as it
is an exterior location”
• The threshold scene “in this most transitional of spaces, also points the
play in two directions: anticipation and retrospect” (134)
• “Just as the space is transitional, a place of betweenness, so the play’s
temporality is disjunct: there is no ‘present’, only a confluence of past and
future”
• Sense of 360 about Mélisande’s entry to the play – “the story she has
escaped is the one she is about to enter” (135)
• Golaud the hunter
• Pelleas is “caught between inertia and flight”
• Pelleas always in shadows
• Lower spaces represent the unconscious
• Characters are linked to their surroundings
• “The underground world, polluting and undermining the higher sphere,
provides a scenic ‘correlative’ to the unconscious which the characters
cannot confront”
• Space represents parts of characters
• “What ‘happens’ on stage…is but a reflection of what has been constantly
happening off-stage” (151)
• Little movement – wax dolls, not autonomous characters
• “Closed universe” of P & M
• “The dialogue continually opens up vistas of unseen space: the sea, the
changing sky, swathes of land unvisited by sunlight” (160)
• Situational/scenic repetition – doorstep, fountain, visits to the
‘underworld’

Maurice Maeterlinck – Edward Thomas

• Yniold and Golaud (and servants) “give scale to the play” (68)
• Golaud recognises the futile attempts of the ‘poor little’ people – he is
paralleled by them
• “They are enslaved to two great powers – to life, like all other men, and to
Maeterlinck” (69)

•
•

Golaud, Yniold “are strong, rough, ordinary members of the human
species
...
It must be there but
we can’t see it
...
It rises upwards
...
It is one of the appeals to our
consciousness of verticality” (18)
- Cellar – irrationality, ‘subterranean forces’ – the “impassioned inhabitant
digs and re-digs, making its very depth active” (18)
- Draws on Jung – cellar = the unconscious
- Assumes that all houses have cellar etc – luckily P&M’s castle does
- “The enormous stone plant [the house] has become would not flourish if
it did not have subterranean water at its base” – toxic water in P&M
poisons
- “In a palace, there is no room for intimacy” (29)
- Doors represent daydreams – closed or open

Pelleas et Mélisande close reading

Act I scene i
Stop and start of movement through gate

Scene ii
‘Je ne pourrai plus sortir de cette foret’ – helplessness of movement
Mélisande has run away – uncertain home
Space where things are lost – the fountain
Je me suis trompé de chemin
‘Vous ne pouvez pas rester ici’
They are both lost in the forest – he tries to lead her out

Scene iii
Permanently journeying – will sail straight past home
Pelleas cannot leave to see his dying friend


Scene iv
Pelleas arriving
Sea represents space and movement – possibility of escape
Different spaces represent sun/dark/trapped/escape
Only Mélisande and Golaud have left
Hope of leaving constantly present

Act II scene i
Fountain – still works but not used? Did it ever work?
Mélisande’s unhappiness – ‘je ne suis pas heureuse ici’
Desire to leave – ‘je vais mourir si l’on me laisse ici’
Castle’s ‘tres vieux et tres sombre’ – forests surround it
Dangerous spaces: cave
...
Try to see the bottom
Contrast between caves and fresh breeze
Spaces – always in relation to each other? Under castle – up/down and
above/below
Pelleas and Mélisande represent stillness

Act IV scene i
‘C’est toi, maintenant, qui va ouvrir la porte à l’ère nouvelle’
Mélisande stays still

Scene iii
Sheep being moved

Scene iv
Spaces divided by gate, windows, doors
Mélisande runs to Pelleas
Pelleas searching ‘partout dans la maison, partout dans la campagne’

They are locked out
Being still to hide from Golaud

Act V
Servants are waiting; children play by windows
Sacred space – chambers (M, P’s father)
Blood on the gateway – foreshadowing fulfilled
Space of M’s womb

Scene ii
M wants the windows open
Spaces linked to loneliness
Moving between spaces
Cannot lift arms to hold child – movement stopped
Between life and death




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