| 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: opera. The attempt to recover its spirit twenty years later, when
the music of Night Falls On The Gods was added, was an attempt to
revive the barricades of Dresden in the Temple of the Grail. Only
those who have never had any political enthusiasms to survive can
believe that such an attempt could succeed. G. B. S.
London, 1901
Preface to the First Edition
This book is a commentary on The Ring of the Niblungs, Wagner's
chief work. I offer it to those enthusiastic admirers of Wagner
who are unable to follow his ideas, and do not in the least
understand the dilemma of Wotan, though they are filled with
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: his new prisoner.
"He has not spoken since I put him in his cell," answered the man. "He
is sitting down with his head in his hands and is either sleeping or
reflecting about his crime. The French say he'll get his reckoning to-
morrow morning and be shot in twenty-four hours."
That evening I stopped short under the window of the prison during the
short time I was allowed to take exercise in the prison yard. We
talked together, and he frankly related to me his strange affair,
replying with evident truthfulness to my various questions. After that
first conversation I no longer doubted his innocence; I asked, and
obtained the favor of staying several hours with him. I saw him again
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: vehemence that sometimes carried him into ludicrous extravagance,
making Richard offer his kingdom for a horse and Othello declare of
Cassio that
Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge
Had stomach for them all,
we shall see more civility and hyperbole than sycophancy even in the
earlier and more coldblooded sonnets.
Shakespear and Democracy
Now take the general case pled against Shakespear as an enemy of
democracy by Tolstoy, the late Ernest Crosbie and others, and endorsed
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