In his "Jesus of Nazareth" he intended to show Mary of Magdala in love with the Divine One. Wagner was no fool. Nor was he a madman, as Nordau has tried to show. But he was first, last, and all the time a theatrical thinker. His imagination dwelt in the show-house, and all was grist that came to his mill. If he had thought the meditations of the Creator good material for a music drama, he would have laid his artistic hands upon the eternal throne itself. Thus, he shrank not from grafting spectacular show, Schopenhauerian ethics, and Buddhistic dogmas on the legend of the Holy Grail. As a matter of absolute fact, the Christian elements in this drama are almost wholly spectacular and in the nature of accessories. If ministers of the Gospel desire to be shocked by "Parsifal,"--and they have reason to be, if they look for it in the right place,--let them consider the place which the Holy Grail and the ceremony of the communion occupy in this play. They are merely stage devices to heighten the picture of the suffering of Amfortas, and to impress upon our minds the vital need of the enlightenment of the pure fool. The processional of the Grail is spectacle pure and simple. The eating of the Last Supper is spectacle pure and simple. It has absolutely nothing to do with the story of the drama. The unveiling of the Grail is necessary because it shows how Amfortas is made to suffer agony. But it is no assistance to such Christian ethics as there are in this muddle. If Amfortas has an incurable wound, which is merely the outward symbol of conscience, he ought not to need the sight of the Grail to make him feel worse. The thought of his unworthiness to be a member of the chaste brotherhood should be enough. The foot-washing incident is theatricalism of the crassest kind. Can any one show that it has a direct connection with the development of the story? The argument in its favor is that it shows Kundry as a penitent, and establishes her in relations of atonement with Parsifal. Quite unnecessary, for the significance of the second act is that Parsifal, having resisted her tempting, is spiritually her master and also her redeemer. The act of absolution is made possible by his triumph over the flesh. He could have baptized her and bidden her trust in the Lord without offering us a portrait of the Saviour as represented in the seventh chapter of St. Luke:-- "And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, "And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment." Wagner brings on the tears after the foot-washing, so that he can show us how Kundry was released from the curse of laughter. Or was the curse imposed solely that this theatrical picture might be introduced?