Appia’s design for the first scene of _Parsifal_ discloses a group of boughless, straight-stemmed pines, towering to heaven like the cathedral group at Vallombrosa. Overhead the dense foliage hides the forest paths from the sun. Light comes in through the centre at the back, where there is a vista of plains across to the mountains, on which one may imagine the castle of the Grail. He places a dynamic and dramatic value on light which it is highly important to understand in estimating his work. For example, his lighting of the second act of _Tristan und Isolde_ culminates in a _pitch-dark_ stage during the singing of the love-duet. This artist has designed the scenery for all the _Ring_ and has indicated throughout what the lighting and action shall be. I do not know that Gordon Craig has turned his attention to any particular Wagner drama, although he has made suggestions for several of them, but he could, if he would, devise a mode of stage decoration which would make the plays and their action as appealing in their beauty as the music and the singing often now are. In his book, “On the Art of the Theatre,” he has been explicit in his descriptions of his designs for _Macbeth_, and the rugged strength and symbolism of his settings and ideas for that tragedy proclaim perhaps his best right to be a leader in the reformation of the Wagner dramas, although, even then, it must be confessed that Craig is derived in many instances from Appia, whom Craig himself hails as the foremost stage decorator of Europe to-day. Read Gordon Craig on _Macbeth_ and you will get an idea of how an artist would go to work on _Tristan und Isolde_ or _Götterdämmerung_. “I see two things, I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist cloud which envelops the head of this rock. That is to say, a place for fierce and warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest in. Ultimately this moisture will destroy the rock; ultimately these spirits will destroy the men. Now then, you are quick in your question as to what actually to create for the eye. I answer as swiftly--place there a rock! Let it mount high. Swiftly I tell you, convey the idea of a mist which hangs at the head of this rock. Now, have I departed at all for one-eighth of an inch from the vision which I saw in the mind’s eye? “But you ask me what form this rock shall take and what colour? What are the lines which are the lofty lines, and which are to be seen in any lofty cliff? Go to them, glance but a moment at them; now quickly set them down on your paper; _the lines and their direction_, never mind the cliff. Do not be afraid to let them go high; they cannot go high enough; and remember that on a sheet of paper which is but two inches square you can make a line which seems to tower miles in the air, and you can do the same on your stage, for it is all a matter of proportion and has nothing to do with actuality.