It is a coarser
rendering of that bluntest of all Shakespearean plays, _Measure for
Measure_; its sole subject is the pursuit of sensual pleasure, in which
all indulge, and the ridiculing of those who appear to yearn for
something higher. To detail the contents of the text--it cannot be
called a poem--would serve no purpose; biographically, but not
artistically interesting, it exhibits with amazing candour the first,
purely sexual, stage of the young man of twenty-one. It was the period
when "young Germany's" device was the emancipation of sensuality. Wagner
himself says that his "conception was mainly directed against Puritan
cant, and led to the bold glorification of unrestrained sensuality. I
was determined to understand the grave Shakespearean subject only in
this sense." And in his "Autobiographical Sketch" he says: "I learned to
love matter." In addition to this Wagner gives us the following synopsis
of a (lost) libretto, "_Die Hochzeit_" ("The Wedding"), written at an
earlier period: "A youth, madly in love with his friend's fiancee,
climbs through the window into her bedroom, where the latter is awaiting
the arrival of her lover; the fiancee struggles with the frenzied youth
and throws him down into the yard, where he expires.
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