| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: world must always take precedence of his prettiest fool's
paradise.
As many English Wagnerites seem to be still under the impression
that Wagner composed Rienzi in his youth, Tannhauser and
Lohengrin in his middle age, and The Ring in his later years, may
I again remind them that The Ring was the result of a political
convulsion which occurred when Wagner was only thirty-six, and
that the poem was completed when he was forty, with thirty more
years of work before him? It is as much a first essay in
political philosophy as Die Feen is a first essay in romantic
opera. The attempt to recover its spirit twenty years later, when
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: (7) The monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements of the
Roman constitution are referred to.
(8) Polybius, vi. 9. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
(9) [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
(10) The various stages are [Greek text which cannot be
reproduced], [Greek text which cannot be reproduced].
(11) Polybius, xii. 24.
(12) Polybius, i. 4, viii. 4, specially; and really PASSIM.
(13) He makes one exception.
(14) Polybius, viii. 4.
(15) Polybius, xvi. 12.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings,
Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.
She burn'd with love, as straw with fire flameth;
She burn'd out love, as soon as straw outburneth;
She framed the love, and yet she foil'd the framing;
She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning.
Was this a lover, or a lecher whether?
Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.
VIII.
If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
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