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It is very unfortunate for a man to be compared to Shakespeare even by his enemies, when he is only twenty-seven and has time before him. That is what has happened to Maurice Maeterlinck. Two years ago the poet of Serres Chaudes was known to only a small circle of amateurs of the new; he was known as a young Belgian of curious talent who had published a small volume of vague poems in monotone. On the appearance of La Princesse maleine, in the early part of 1890, Maeterlinck had an unexpected "greatness thrust upon him" by a flaming article of Octave Mirbeau, the author of that striking novel Sébastian Roch in the Figaro of August 24th. "Maurice Maeterlinck," said this uncompromising enthusiast,

"nous a donné l'oeuvre la plus géniale de ce temps, et la plus extraordinaire et la plus naive aussi, comparable—et oserai-je le dire?—supérieure en beauté à ce qu'il y a de plus beau dans Shakespeare.... plus tragique que 'Macbeth,' plus extraordinaire de pensée que 'Hamlet.'"

In short, there was no Shakespearean merit in which La Princesse Maleine was lacking, and it followed that the author of La Princesse Maleine was the Shakespeare of our age—the Belgian Shakespeare. The merits of Maeterlinck were widely discussed in France and Belgium, and it was not long before the five-act drama was followed by two pieces, each in one act, called L'Intruse and Les Aveugles. In May, 1891, L'Intruse was given by the Théâtre d'Art at the Vaudeville on the occasion of the benefit of Paul Verlaine and Paul Gauguin.