The labyrinthine libretto owes its defects not to the many years it took to write--for when once Wagner set to work it was done in a single breath--but to the nature of the subject and the very German way in which a German composer inevitably felt impelled to treat that subject. In Chapter X, p. 193 and onward, the reader will recollect certain letters: I beg him, before going further, to turn back to these and mark with care Wagner's own story of the growth of this gigantic opera. The letter on p. 227 is most characteristic of a German. _Siegfried's Death_ did not explain enough, so an explanation had to be offered; that explanation needed explaining, so a second explanation was made; this left matters in as unsatisfactory a state as ever, so, finally, the first opera of the four, the _Rhinegold_, was written--and with that Wagner mercifully stopped. He had set himself a task simply appalling in the demands it must needs make on his time and creative energy; moreover, he had set himself a task just as hard in the demands it made on his stage-craft. The four dramas could not but overlap, and they do overlap to such an extent that in the very near future "cuts" will be made freely to eliminate repetitions which have even now grown a weariness to the flesh. The poem--or, more properly, the four opera-books--must now be summarised, and I will endeavour to avoid imitation of Wagner by not going over the same ground twice, or more than twice. II The central figure of the _Ring_, considered as a whole, is Wotan. He is absolute lord of earth and heaven as long as his luck lasts. The luck lasts no longer than is determined, not by the hours, but by some mysterious something, some unfathomable mystery of a power, behind the hours. When the hour strikes, his stately home in the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, shall be consumed in flames; Wotan and the minor gods shall perish; a new start shall be made in the world. Now, this idea of the old saga is clearly enough a way of stating, in the guise of a story, a simple historical fact, that with the coming of the White Christ the old deities were driven out. There is no drama inherent in it: for the drama Wagner went to the explanatory story of how the _dénouement_ came about, of the causes which brought it about, which, with the self-contradictoriness of most of those primitive attempts to account for the mystery of the world, were not causes at all, but only incidents by the way, since the catastrophe had been arranged for since the beginning of time. The main cause (in this sense) is Wotan's lust for power, and Wagner reads it thus: since to hold and exercise this power compels Wotan to do things which are a violence to his best nature, to thrust love from him, he voluntarily abdicates and calmly awaits the end. He first makes several struggles to keep the power while shifting its responsibilities, and these form the subject of three of the four dramas.