The psychic elements of Love which thus far have been compared to
overtones, might also be regarded from a Wagnerian point of view as
_Leitmotive_ or leading motives in the Drama of Historic Love. In the
first scenes, where the actors are animals and savages, followed by
Egyptians, Hebrews, Hindoos, Greeks, and Romans, and mediæval clowns and
fanatics, these leading motives are heard only as short melodic phrases,
and at long intervals, pregnant, indeed, with future possibilities, but
isolated and never combined into a symphony of Love. In the last act,
however, which we have now reached, all these motives appear in various
combinations, in the gorgeous and glowing instrumentation of modern
poets, with all possible figurative, harmonic, and dynamic nuances; and
at the same time so intertwined and interwoven that no one apparently
has ever succeeded in unravelling the poetic woof and distinguishing the
separate threads. For us, however, who have followed these motives from
the moment when they first appeared in a primitive form, it will be easy
to distinguish them and subject each one to a separate analysis. We
shall first consider those which, like Coyness and Jealousy, are already
familiar and need only be considered in their modern forms, and then
pass on to those which are more and more exclusively modern.