THE BETROTHAL."'
ALL those who shared delightedly in the wonderful journey of Tyltyl and Myltyl to find the Bide Bird of happiness will be eager to hear of Tyltyl's further adventures, this time irk search of "the great and only love" of his life—a search which the Fairy Berylune, as imperious as ever, insists that he shall begin at the somewhat early age of sixteen. We question whether the anticipations aroused by the first play will be altogether fulfilled by its sequel. The Betrothal has a great deal of charm, but while the philosophy is as abundant, there is less poetry ; while the fun is more plentiful, it is more obvious; and the sentiment which touched the earlier story so pleasantly here drops at times into mawkishness. There is also an absence of those delightful creatures of M. Maeterlinck's whimsical imagination who accompanied Tyltyl and Myltyl on their wanderings. Light is there, it is true, but she is so dim, if we may put it so, as to be almost negligible. Of the new- comers there is Destiny, bombastic and comic, mercilessly satirized ; and there is the Veiled Girl, true figure of fantasy, whom Destiny, if any one, should have recognized were he not too obsessed with himself as " insuperable, insensible, invulner- able, immutable, inexorable, irresistible, invisible, inflexible, and irrevocable" to recognize a truth near at hand ; and there are the six young ladies who, to Tyltyl's embarrassment, accompany him on his travels. But there is, alas ! no one to take the place of Milk, pensive and always apt " to turn " at critical moments; of the Cat, who measured love according to desert; of the Dog, who never measured it at all ; and of Sugar, of small soul and odd gait. We are far from demanding that an artist should repeat his triumphs on exact lines, but we should have delighted to see Cat and Dog assisting Tyltyl, together with his ancestors and the children of the Future, to discover the Ideal Mate. For that is the message of the play. Maeterlinck, like most poets and philosophers, is appalled by the sad mistakes Man has made in this momentous matter of mating :— " We have to choose," says the Fairy Berylune to Tyltyl, " the great and only love of your life ; for each man has only one. If he misses it, he wanders miserably over the face of the earth. The search goes on until he dies, leaving unfulfilled the great duty which he owes to all those who are within him. But he seldom has an idea of this. He walks along with his eyes shut : seizes some woman whom lie chances to most in the dark ; and shows her to his friends as proudly as though the gates of Paradise were opening. He fancies himself alone in the world and imagines that in his own heart all things begin and end . . . which is absurd."
The scene where Tyltyl consults his ancestors is for us the finest thing in the play. The moral here seems to be that we must be careful to listen to the beet of our ancestors. But suppose we are not so lucky ae Tyltyl in having a Great Ancestor to over. ride the others; or suppose we allow ourselves to be advised by a Drunken Ancestor, as Tyltyl almost did, or by a Sick Ancestor, or a merely Rich Ancestor, or some other Ancestor representing our least worthy instinct& ! And even then, with the help of the Best of Ancestors, the problem is not solved, for not one of Tyltyl's forbears recognized the Veiled Girl. The moral of the final solution is no doubt sound enough, but its method is a disappointment, for it is here that M. Maeterlinck drops from • TIN Betrothal. as Mario gettallecla Ludes; anima. las. ark]
sentiment to sentimentality. As we have said, the play suffers a little from comparison with its famous predecessor, but for all that it is an attractive allegory, and, we imagine, will gain considerably when acted.
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