on and orthodoxy, and a pillar of the most exclusive Dresden
circles. Such a work, would, I believe, have a large sale, and be read
with satisfaction and reassurance by many lovers of Wagner's music.

As to my much demurred-to relegation of Night Falls On The Gods to
the category of grand opera, I have nothing to add or withdraw. Such a
classification is to me as much a matter of fact as the Dresden rising
or the police proclamation; but I shall not pretend that it is a matter
of such fact as everybody's judgment can grapple with. People who prefer
grand opera to serious music-drama naturally resent my placing a very
grand opera below a very serious music-drama. The ordinary lover of
Shakespeare would equally demur to my placing his popular catchpenny
plays, of which As You Like It is an avowed type, below true
Shakespearean plays like Measure for Measure. I cannot help that.
Popular dramas and operas may have overwhelming merits as enchanting
make-believes; but a poet's sincerest vision of the 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 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 indignation at the irreverence of the
Philistines who frankly avow that they find the remarks of the god too
often tedious and nonsensical. Now to be devoted to Wagner merely as a
dog is devoted to his master, sharing a few elementary ideas, appetites
and em