A Belgian of Flemish descent who wrote in French and spent most of his life in France, Maurice Maeterlinck had a powerful effect on the theatrical world of the late nineteenth century. In a prolific career that extended into the ninth decade of his life, he published twenty-eight plays, two collections of poetry, two short stories, many volumes of popularizing essays on philosophical, occult, and scientific subjects, and an autobiography. But literary historians generally agree that his most innovative and influential works were the plays that he wrote in the 1890s and early 1900s. In 1891 Paul Fort's avant-garde Théâtre d'Art produced L'Intruse (1891; translated as The Intruder, 1891) and Les Aveugles (1891; translated as Blind, 1891); Aurélien-François Lugné-Poë's troupe staged Pelléas et Mélisande (1893; translated as Pelléas and Mélisande, 1894) and Intérieur (1895; translated...