Maeterlinck’s short one act drama Les Sept Princesses – The Seven Princesses, qualified as consisting entirely in “suggestion, stylisation, dematerialisation”, has generally been considered as the emblem of the “symbolist day-dreams” of which Maeterlinck is often held as the perfect executioner. Nonetheless an analytical reading of the play shows the tension between the expenditure given over to showing and the sobriety of what is said. In other words, to bring to light the staging required by the drama and the description of the bodies given over to the gaze requires replacing the play within the expectations of the 1892 public. And from that point of view it the material culture of that period and more precisely the neurophysiological sciences which give the mise-en-scène of this “live tableau” its meaning, whereby the forms mental illness take refer back to their historicity.