The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: but is simply Wotan's wife and Freia's sister: nay, she
contradicts her allegorical self by conniving at all Wotan's
rogueries. That, of course, is just what State Law would do; but
we must not save the credit of the allegory by a quip. Not until
she reappears in the next play (The Valkyries) does her function
in the allegorical scheme become plain.
One preconception will bewilder the spectator hopelessly unless
he has been warned against it or is naturally free from it. In
the old-fashioned orders of creation, the supernatural personages
are invariably conceived as greater than man, for good or evil.
In the modern humanitarian order as adopted by Wagner, Man is the
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