''Father Setubal'' (L'Abbé Sétubal) is a play by

Maurice Maeterlinck Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count/Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the 1911 Nobel Prize in ...

dating probably to 1941 and first performed in that year in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

. It is about a priest who hears the confession of a murderer who refuses to admit his crime publicly, after an innocent man has been condemned for it. In order to rescue the innocent without breaking the seal of confession, the priest accuses himself of the crime. The play was first published in Maeterlinck, Théatre Inédit in 1959. (See Paul Gorceix, Maeterlinck: L'Arpenteur de l'invisible (Brussels 2005), pp. 476-7).

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Thèâtre inédit: L'Abbé Setubal, Les trois justiciers, Le jugement dernier
1959 plays Plays by Maurice Maeterlinck {{1950s-play-stub