| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: the stage in the second act and tell one another at great length
what the audience has already seen pass before its eyes in the
first act. The extent to which Wagner has been seduced into
violating this rule by his affection for his themes is startling
to a practiced playwright. Siegfried inherits from Wotan a mania
for autobiography which leads him to inflict on every one he
meets the story of Mimmy and the dragon, although the audience
have spent a whole evening witnessing the events he is narrating.
Hagen tells the story to Gunther; and that same night Alberic's
ghost tells it over again to Hagen, who knows it already as well
as the audience. Siegfried tells the Rhine maidens as much of it
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: pale-amber drinks. Actors grew to recognize the semibald head and
the shining, round, good- natured face looming out at them from
the dim well of the theater, and sometimes, in a musical show,
they directed a quip at him, and he liked it. He could pick out
the critics as they came down the aisle, and even had a nodding
acquaintance with two of them.
"Kelly, of the Herald," he would say carelessly. "Bean. of
the Trib. They're all afraid of him."
So he frolicked, ponderously. In New York he might have been
called a Man About Town.
And he was lonesome. He was very lonesome. So he searched about
One Basket |
