United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Yniold wishes to go, but Golaud restrains him. "Let us stay here in the shadow a little longer.... One cannot tell, yet.... I think Pelléas is mad!" he exclaims violently. He lifts Yniold up to the window, cautioning him to make no noise, and asks him what he sees. The child reports that Mélisande is there, and that his uncle Pelléas is there, too. "What are they doing? Are they near each other?"
"If I were God," ruminates the aged king, "how infinitely I should pity the hearts of men!" The scene changes once more to the fountain in the park. Yniold is discovered seeking to move a great rock behind which his golden ball has rolled. Night is coming on. The distant bleating of sheep is heard. Yniold looks over the edge of the terrace and sees the flock crowding along the road.
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? 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."
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 poetic and pictorial ensemble which completely fascinates and enchains the mind.
Certain portions have been left out as the scenes, at the beginning of Act I and Act V, in which the servingwomen of the castle appear; the fourth scene of Act II, in which Pelléas is persuaded by Arkël to postpone his journey to the bedside of his dying friend Marcellus; the opening scene of Act III, between Pelléas, Mélisande, and Yniold.
The music of the vault scene forms a pointed commentary on the implications of the action and dialogue in character it is dark-hued, forbidding, sinister. As the scene changes again, a very short interlude introduces a new theme that of Little Yniold, Golaud's son, whom he is to use as the innocent tool of his suspicions.
A tumultuous and agitated crescendo passage brings the act to a portentous close. A variant of the Pelléas theme, with the opening notes of the Fate motive as an under voice, begins the short prelude to the fourth act; there is a hint of the Yniold theme, and the first two notes of the Pelléas motive introduce the first scene.
"So, papa, so!" laughs the boy, and then cries out as he is pricked by his father's beard. "Oh, your beard!... It pricks! It is getting all gray, papa; and your hair, too all gray, all gray!" Suddenly the window under which they are sitting is illuminated, and the light falls upon them. "Oh, mama has lit her lamp!" exclaims Yniold. "Yes," observes Golaud; "it begins to grow light."
Marie Aubry; Mélisande, Mlle. Meuris; Arkël, Émile Raymond; Golaud, Lugné-Poë; Geneviève, Mme. Camée; Le petit Yniold, Georgette Loyer. "Take care," warns The Old Man in that most simply touching of Maeterlinck's plays, Intérieur; "we do not know how far the soul extends about men."
It is not the first time I have noticed that there might be something between you.... You are older than she; it will suffice to have said this to you. Avoid her as much as possible, though not too pointedly." The next scene passes before the castle. Golaud and his little son Yniold, the innocent playfellow of Mélisande and Pelléas, are together. Golaud questions him.
Word Of The Day