This wise and heroic Brangäne, seeing the bride of Mark in the arms of Tristan, and knowing that they are the victims of her temporizing policy, bewails what she has done and suddenly discovers that death would have been better. The English translations do not bring this passage out clearly, yet it is of vital importance in explaining the character of Isolde's maid.
In the second act Brangäne is shown to us the victim of her own ceaseless terrors. Day and night she cowers under the shadow of the impending axe. Her mind being stimulated by her fears for her mistress and her own remorse, she plays the spy and tracks the traitor Melot to his lair.
But all in vain. The barriers are burned away. The blood of Isolde is become as lava in her veins. She knows naught in all the world but the mad delirium of passion. Isolde will extinguish the torch. Brangäne pleads, and cries: "Oh that I had not once been faithless and false to my mistress's will! If I had only remained dumb and blind, thy work had been death! Now, as it is, thy shame, thy most shameful trouble, my work,—thus must I, blameworthy, know it."
Not very heroic that! Brangäne wishes she had kept out of the whole affair. Then the death of Tristan and Isolde would have been the latter's act. Now this poor maid feels that her policy of temporizing has caused all the trouble and brought her beloved mistress into a shameful position. That is practically all of Brangäne.
One little speech in the third act shows that she is still reproaching herself for her weakness. She has gone to the King and atoned for her "blind guilt," as she calls it, by explaining to him the cause of the loss of honor by Tristan and Isolde.
In the entire text of Wagner there is nothing to indicate that he intended Brangäne to be regarded as anything but a simple-minded serving-woman, deeply attached to her mistress, acting in the matter of the potions on a blind and instantaneous impulse to save her mistress from death and murder. She is naïve in thought, superficial in reasoning, straightforward in emotion, and altogether transparent as crystal. Kurvenal's devotion to Tristan is essentially a masculine devotion, ready to face death, deploring dishonor, but not forsaking even in the face of shame. Kurvenal serves with heart and life. Brangäne serves with heart and subterfuge.
A vast amount of ill-informed feminine twitter is accepted as learned comment on such characters as Brangäne. All that is necessary to a full understanding of this or any other Wagnerian personage is a careful examination of the text and music. The text should always be the original German, for the libretto translators have played havoc with it. Brangäne's most significant wail, "Unpreventable endless trouble instead of quick death," is usually translated in a misleading manner.