I hope I have succeeded in setting forth clearly the forces at work and the nature of the two people on whom they are working. Writers have indulged in grotesque pages of explanation and speculation, from which they might have been saved by a careful reading of the libretto, supplemented by a slight acquaintance with the music. The subject might easily have become intricate--in fact, hopelessly involved and entangled--but Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft, and knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all as clear as the day. The end of each act sees the lovers in a situation which is at heart the same, though in externals different. Rapt in each other, they care nothing about the sailors, attendants, approaching crowds, and the rest, at the end of the first act; at the end of the second they scarcely understand Mark's passionate affection--they only know it is an enemy of their love; and, finally, they are glad when death frees them from life, which means an incessant trouble and interruption to them. The tragedy deepens and grows more intense with each successive scene; each separates them more widely from life and all that life means, until in the last act the divorce is complete. This is the purpose of the drama; this _is_ the drama, and those who do not like it must turn to another opera. If the drama is clear, so is the music. Wagner's powers were now at their fullest and ripest; in invention, technical skill, mastery of the colours of the orchestra, he towers far above every composer born in the nineteenth century. Nietzsche, in one of his many quarrelsome diatribes, says Wagner _determined_ to be a musician and made himself one by sheer will-power. But not by taking much thought, nor by determination, nor by exercise of will-power, does any man become an artistic inventor, as Nietzsche would have perceived had he himself been capable of more than spasmodic, fragmentary thought. _Tristan_ is full of great melodies: gigantic themes, like that which is played while Isolda awaits Tristan's entrance; tender ones, like the music given to Brangaena; passionate and intolerably sweet, like the duet of the pair after the drinking of the philtre. The other acts contain even more amazing things, and to them we shall come in due time. First let us note how Wagner sustains his background and atmosphere throughout the first act. At times, when our attention has to be concentrated on the personages on the opening stage, the sea song theme, with its smell of the pungent, salt sea air, disappears; then, as I have remarked, it gradually creeps in again, so that we do not realize that it has ever been absent; or, again, as during the conversation between Isolda and Brangaena, it breaks in abruptly, with the roar of the seamen's voices and Kurvenal's savage orders. It is managed with the most consummate skill. Though the tent blots out a view of the ocean, yet the mast and bellying sail (which