“Maeterlinck’s man,” says S.C. de Soissons in a penetrating study of the Belgian’s dramatic methods, “is a being whose sensuous life is only a concrete symbol of his infinite transcendental side; and, further, is only a link in an endless change of innumerable existences, a link that remains in continual communication, in mutual union with all the other links....  In Maeterlinck’s dramas the whole of nature vibrates with man, either warning him of coming catastrophes or taking on a mournful attitude after they have happened.  He considers man to be a great, fathomless mystery, which one cannot determine precisely, at which one can only glance, noting his involuntary and instinctive words, exclamations and impressions.  Maeterlinck consciously deprives nature of her passive role of a soulless accessory, he animates her, orders her to collaborate actively in the action of the drama, to speak mysteriously beside man and to man, to forecast future incidents and catastrophes, in a word, to participate in all the actions of that fragment of human life which is called a drama.”  This “rhythmic correspondence,” as Mr. James Huneker calls it, between man and his environment, is nowhere more effectively insisted upon by Maeterlinck than in Pelleas et Melisande.  Note the incident at the conclusion of the first act, where the departure of the ship and the gathering of the storm are commented upon by the two lovers in a scene which is charged with an inescapable atmosphere of foreboding; note the incident of the fugitive doves in the scene at Melisande’s tower window; or the episodic passage near the end of the third act, during the tense and painful scene of Golaud’s espionage:  “Do you see those poor people down there trying to kindle a little fire in the forest?—­It has rained.  And over there, do you see the old gardener trying to lift that tree that the wind has blown down across the road?—­He cannot; the tree is too big ... too heavy; ... it will lie where it fell.”  Note, further on (in the third scene of the fourth act), just in advance of the culmination of the tragedy, the strange and ominous scene wherein Little Yniold describes the passing of the flock of sheep: 

“Why, there is no more sun....  They are coming, the little sheep.  How many there are!  They fear the dark!  They crowd together!  They cry! and they go quick!  They are at the crossroads, and they know not which way to turn!...  Now they are still....  Shepherd! why do they not speak any more?

     THE SHEPHERD (who is out of sight)
    “Because it is no longer the road to the fold.

     YNIOLD
    “Where are they going?—­Shepherd!  Shepherd!—­where are they
     going?—­Where are they going to sleep to-night?  Oh! oh! it is too
     dark!—­I am going to tell something to somebody.”

Always the setting, the accessories, reflect and underscore the inner movement of the drama, and always with arresting and intense effect.