Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) changed the course of European theatre by introducing Symbolism and won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but none of his works has been in print in English for many years; the last English translations were done in the 1890s. At the premiere of his first play, La Princess Maleine (1889), Verlaine, Gauguin and Octave Mirbeau were among the audience; Mirbeau s championing of the Belgian Shakespeare brought him worldwide fame and the early plays were performed in England and the United States at the time but he is best remembered now for PZllZas et MZlisande (1892), set as an opera by Claude Debussy, and his fairy-play L Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird). Among his early works are a series of short works Maeterlinck called Marionette Plays . They are static tableaux, showing fragile figures at the mercy of fate, but heavily charged with atmosphere. They seem strikingly modern even in the 21st century, and are obvious precursors of Beckett and Pinter.