It is now decided that the question between Tristan and the steward shall be settled by combat, and the Princess orders Tristan's armour to be made ready. In looking at the sword she discovers the nick in the blade, and finds that the splinter from Morold's head, which has been preserved, fits it. It also dawns upon her that "Tantris" is "Tristan" reversed. She would slay Tristan, but the Queen desires to know what matter of great import brought him again to Ireland. He makes known his mission, and as the Queen professes herself ready to forgive Tristan for killing Morold, her brother, the compact is made. Princess Isolt goes with Tristan. As they depart for Cornwall, the Queen confides to Brangäne, the Princess's kinswoman and companion, a love potion, to be given to King Mark and the Princess on the marriage night that they may ever afterward love each other. The Princess is loath to leave her own people, and she hates Tristan for having slain her Uncle Morold.
On the way to Cornwall a serving-maid, who is asked for a drink for Tristan and Isolt, ignorantly gives them the love potion, and they love one another. The poem narrates many incidents in the course of deceit pursued by the lovers, but they need not be recapitulated here. The King's steward, Majordo, aided by the dwarf, Melot, watches the lovers and informs the King of their infidelity. But with the help of Brangäne's cunning, they several times avoid detection. The King even banishes them from Court, but, finding them asleep in a forest retreat with a naked sword between them, takes them back, though he orders them to remain apart. Finally he surprises them in the garden, and then Tristan is forced to flee from Cornwall. He finds a refuge in Arundel, the land of Duke Jovelin, whose daughter, Isolt of the White Hand, falls in love with him. As he is always singing of his lost Isolt, she thinks that he loves her. He, hearing nothing from the old Isolt, deems himself forgotten, and concludes that it would be as well to marry Isolt of the White Hand.
Gottfried's poem ends here. In the other versions, however, the tale is completed. Tristan does marry the second Isolt. He receives a poisoned wound while aiding a friend to meet clandestinely another man's wife. Knowing that none save his first Isolt can heal the wound, he sends Kurvenal to bring her, telling him that if he succeeds in getting her he must hoist a white sail when entering port on his return, but if he fails he is to hoist a black one. Isolt of the White Hand hears this, and when the ship is sighted bearing a white sail, she tells her husband that it is black, whereupon he turns his face to the wall and dies. Tristan's Isolt arrives to find him dead. She lays herself on the bier beside him and expires. King Mark, having learned the story of the love potion, has the two buried in the same chapel, on opposite sides. A rose tree grows from Tristan's tomb and a vine from Isolt's, and the branches reach across the chapel and intertwine.
II.—Wagner’s Dramatic Poem
The falsehood of the second Isolt has greatly annoyed some of the modern writers. Bayard Taylor simply declined to believe that such a thing happened. Matthew Arnold made the second Isolt faithful to her love. She nursed her dying husband tenderly even while waiting for the first Isolt to arrive. But Wagner wisely ignored this part of the legend. We hear nothing of any second Isolt. As is invariably the case, his treatment of the story draws together all the beauties of the original material and moulds them into a compact, consistent whole, instinct with dramatic force and poetic beauty. In attempting to set forth the Wagnerian arrangement of the materials, I find it difficult to proceed coolly and systematically. There is a witchery in this marvellous drama of fatal love that masters my mind. If the reader finds me wanting in the calm of judicial equipoise, let him forgive me, for I am dealing with that which lies next to my heart. As Louis Ehlert says:
"When in the second act Isolde is awaiting her lover, when the orchestra throbs with a thousand pulses and every nerve becomes a sounding tone, I am no longer the man I am through the rest of the year, nor am I artistically and morally a responsible being: I am a Wagnerian."
For the perfect understanding of the story the first act of the drama is the most important. It is also that which the fewest persons closely study. Edward Schuré, in "Le Drame Musicale," says:
"The fundamental idea of the legend is that of the love-philtre, fatal, irresistible, overpowering and uniting two human beings; of love vanquishing everything, honour, family, society, life and death, but which is itself ennobled by its very grandeur and fidelity. For it bears within itself its own punishment as well as its justification, its religion and its world, its hell and its heaven, supreme sorrow and supreme consolation."
While this may be a correct view of the old legend, it is not true of Wagner's drama. In the latter the philtre performs the office of Fate in the ancient Greek tragedy. In the plays of Sophocles and Æschylus mortals fulfil their manifest destinies, but Fate is the secret agency which hurries them forward to their ends. So, in this drama of Wagner's, Tristan and Isolde are the victims of a fatal love before the action begins, and the philtre is only the instrument through which all restraints are removed and the unhappy pair hurled into the vortex of their own passion, helpless victims of cruel Destiny.