''Interior'' (french: Intérieur) is an

1895 Events January–March * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. * January 12 – The National Trust for Places of Histor ...

play in rhymed dialogue by Belgian

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

Maurice Maeterlinck. It was one of his few plays intended for marionettes.

Premiere

''Interior'' premiered at the

Théâtre de l'Œuvre The Théâtre de l'Œuvre is a Paris theatre on the Right Bank, located at 3, Cité Monthiers, entrance 55, rue de Clichy, in the 9° arrondissement. It is commonly conflated and confused with the late-nineteenth-century theater company named Th� ...

on March 15, 1895.

Cast of characters

Synopsis

The old man and the stranger appear outside the house. The family can be seen within through the windows. The old man and the stranger argue over how to inform the family of the death of one of the daughters. As the crowd approaches with the body, the old man enters the house and can be seen through the windows informing them of their loss.

Themes

The main theme of the play is death. Maeterlinck creates tension by contrasting the anxiety of the characters in the garden with the serenity and ignorance of the family within the house. Maeterlinck, an avid reader of

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

, believed that man was ultimately powerless against the forces of fate. Believing that any actor, due to the limitations of his physical mannerisms and expressions, was unable to portray the symbolic figures of his plays, Maeterlinck decided that marionettes were an excellent alternative. Being guided by strings, which are operated by a puppeteer, marionettes are an excellent representation of fate's complete control over man. Maeterlinck never clarifies whether the girl's death was a suicide. The stranger says she had been spotted walking along the riverbank. The old man says: "She smiled as they smile who choose to be silent, or who are afraid they will not be understood ... She seemed hardly to hope."Maurice Maeterlinck, ''Home'' in The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck, second series, pp. 163-191, Richard Hovey, trans., (Duffield and Company:New York, 1908), p. 172.

In other media

Three small plays for marionettes by Maurice Maeterlinck, ''La Mort de Tintagiles'', ''Intérieur'' and ''Alladine et Palomides'', were made into an opera entitled ''Le Silence des ombres'' by

Benjamin Attahir Benjamin Attahir (born 25 February 1989 in Toulouse) is a French composer, violinist and conductor. He studied at , at the under Édith Canat de Chizy and at the Conservatoire de Paris itself. He studied the violin under Ami Flammer. Attahir ...

premiered at La Monnaie in Brussels in September 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Interior (Play) Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck Symbolist plays 1895 plays