and complete without them. Retain them, and the play becomes
connected by conversational references with the three music
dramas; but the connection establishes no philosophic coherence,
no real identity between the operatic Brynhild of the Gibichung
episode (presently to be related) and the daughter of Wotan and
the First Mother.

THE LOVE PANACEA

We shall now find that at the point where The Ring changes from
music drama into opera, it also ceases to be philosophic, and
becomes didactic. The philosophic part is a dramatic symbol of
the world as Wagner observed it. In the didactic part the
philosophy degenerates into the prescription of a romantic
nostrum for all human ills. Wagner, only mortal after all,
succumbed to the panacea mania when his philosophy was exhausted,
like any of the rest of us.

The panacea is by no means an original one. Wagner was
anticipated in the year 1819 by a young country gentleman from
Sussex named Shelley, in a work of extraordinary artistic power
and splendor. Prometheus Unbound is an English attempt at a Ring;
and when it is taken into account that the author was only 27
whereas Wagner was 40 when he completed the poem of The Ring, our
vulgar patriotism may find an envious satisfaction in insisting
upon the comparison. Both works set forth the same conflict
between humanity and its gods and governments, issuing in the
redemption of man from their tyranny by the growth of his will
into perfect strength and self-confidence; and both finish by a
lapse into panacea-mongering didacticism by the holding up of