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Updated: May 13, 2025
It will be well to note in this narrative how the description of Tristan's sufferings are set to a descending chromatic passage, like the second voice of the principal theme already described: The thought of her humiliation maddens the high-spirited woman, and she sends her maid, Brangane, to summon the knight into her presence. The knight parleys diplomatically with the messenger.
This touches the pride of Tristan's squire, Kurwenal, who asks permission to frame an answer, and, receiving it, shouts a ballad of his master's method of paying tribute to Ireland with the head of his enemy; for the battle between Tristan and Morold had grown out of the effort made by the latter to collect tribute-money from England.
But Wagner did not find that more poetical way, so let us rejoice that through this uncouth lingo Wagner managed to get into a sort of verse the idea that night was the friend of Tristan's love and day its enemy, and that in the end everlasting night is best of all.
He stared about him, at his magnificent and voluptuously appointed apartment, at his statuary and discreetly veiled pictures, and all the evidences of a cultivated and elegant wickedness; he touched a stud and the sad pipings of Tristan's shepherd filled the air. His eye wandered from one object to another. They were costly and gross and florid but they were his.
In his heart he was inclined to a kind of contempt for the monarch's humours. When there was a chance of hanging a man, it seemed to him a waste of time to play the fool in this fashion. The cat and mouse policy was never Tristan's way. He was ever for the dog's way with the rat.
Life endures but for one embrace, one glance, one word: "Isolde!" While Isolde lies mortally stricken upon Tristan's corpse, Marke and his train arrive upon a second ship. Brangane has told the secret of the love-draught, and the king has come to unite the lovers. But his purpose is not known, and faithful Kurwenal receives his death-blow while trying to hold the castle against Marke's men.
As the strength of the liquor reached the heart the labouring of the chest quieted, the leaden dullness of the cheeks took on some semblance of life, and the eyes brightened. The spasm had passed, but for a moment it had seemed to Commines that Tristan's letter had, at worst, been prophetic.
The scene is obviously laid in the forecastle; one glance at the stage is enough to show this, and the sails are set that way. Nor can it be altered, for it would never do to have them looking among the audience for the land ahead. So that Tristan's ship has her rudder in the bow! Rarely is Wagner at fault in trifles of this kind; in all other respects the deck-scene is admirably truthful.
So far the music; we see in the torch hurled from its shining post and left expiring on the ground, a symbol of the drama that is concentrated in the act; of Tristan's glory extinguished in the realm of night. All this in the scenic representation forms one issue, the different elements coalescing in the hearer's mind into a single dramatic incident.
In love, if the field is clear, a single glimpse may, like Tristan's potion, produce a violent and irresistible passion; but in friendship the result remains more proportionate to the incidental causes, discrimination is preserved, jealousy and exclusiveness are avoided.
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