PELLEAS AND MELISANDE, by Maurice Maeterlinck, Adapted by Gavin Bantock: Great Dramas for Student Actors, Vol. 2

A beautiful Symbolist drama involving a love triangle between Melisande, a delicate nymphlike woman of unknown origin, her somewhat impulsive marriage to Golaud, the grandson of a king, and the intense but pure love that soon develops between her and Golaud's half-brother Pelleas.

The play is set at first in a deep forest and then in a huge, decaying castle and its gardens. There is an overall dream-like atmosphere as if the characters are symbols of emotion rather than living human beings who walk and talk; and there is a sense that no one in the play either understands or can control, or escape from, the workings of destiny.

It is a play which exactly fits the term Romantic as opposed to Realistic, which somehow aligns it with the guardian spirits of music and the sea. On the realistic level it is simply story of forbidden love, jealousy and anger, ending in murder and the death of the heroine. But Melisande's passing is imbued with beauty rather than sadness, as if she is drifting back to the "otherworld" she came from.

Published by First Servant Books