BLUEBIRD, The ('l'Oiseau bleu)). The most generally acceptableplay of Maurice Maeterlinck is 'The Bluebird,' which, since its first appearance in 1908, has achieved wide suc cess upon the stage. Although it lacks the qualities for which its author is best known, and especially his dreamy, suggestive evocation of inarticulate fears, it is representative of a new tendency in the theatre. It is pictorial and symbolic, narrational rather than dramatic. As a piece of symbolism it should not be taken too seriously. Perhaps the acute critic may be justified in perceiving here certain correspond ences to the doctrines of Swedenborg, but it is doubtful if Maeterlinck had any more defi nite intention than to tell a pretty story in spectacle and fairy-tale talk, and to indicate that those who engage in a quest for happiness are likely, after all their far wanderings, to find what they seek at home in an act of un selfishness. The humble Mityl and Tyltyl who dream of roving through the land of Memory, the realm of Night, and the Kingdom of the Future, accompanied by Light, the Cat, and the Dog, and the souls of Fire, Bread, Sugar, and Milk, hunting for the bird that is ever blue, fail to discover it, although birds blue at first sight appear here and there. It is only when
Tyltyl assents to the request of a neighbor that he give his turtle dove to her sick child that he captures true happiness for a moment. His dove turns deeply blue, yet flies away, leaving Tyltyl to ask its return of the audience. Deli cate humor and insight into the nature of children mark this fantasy, which has been translated into English by A. Teixeira de Mattos (1909). Discussions of the play ap pear in the treatises upon Maeterlinck by Gerard Harry, M. J. Moses, Edward Thomas, Una Clark, and with fullest detail in 'Maeter linck's Symbolism' (1911), by Henry Rose.