present
stage the craftsmanship was little in advance of Scribe's. In some
respects he was very far in advance of Scribe. The whole thing springs
from and swings round a central idea, the idea of the lonely outcast
doomed to sail a stormy sea for ever without even the prospect of hell
as a refuge, always seeking one to redeem him and free him from his
torments, and at last finding her. But Wagner had not yet evolved or
invented the technique which would enable him to present his idea in
the theatre without resorting to those crude conventionalities which
seemed harmless and even reasonable enough at the time, though now
they compel us to smile. He could no more have constructed the
framework of the _Dutchman_ without shoving on and pulling off his
puppets as seemed desirable than he could have written the music
without using the set forms, airs, duets, etc., of a type of opera
which, in intention, he had already gone far beyond. The
conventionality shows itself in one rather surprising way. Throughout
the opera it is made plain that the whole world knows the Dutchman
story: mariners shiver when they think of meeting him; children are
scared when they are told of him. Yet when the very ship described in
the "old ballad," sung in the second act, sails into the fiord with
its blood-red sails and black masts, no one evinces the faintest
astonishment. Daland has the Dutchman's picture at home; he sees the
ship before his eyes; but in a matter-of-fact manner he asks him who
he is. Daland's sailors are called on deck to set sail, and pay no
attention to so weird a craft.

In the next act we have a room in Daland's house. A number of girls
are spinning; Senta alone is idle, absorbed in a portrait that hangs
on the wall--that of Vanderdecken. From earliest girlhood she has
heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her
hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind
and resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity
occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which
men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned
and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more
or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in
taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta,
from the moment she is seen, stands out as the principal figure. The
Dutchman is there to give character and atmosp