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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: have spent a whole evening witnessing the events he is narrating.
Hagen tells the story to Gunther; and that same night Alberic's
ghost tells it over again to Hagen, who knows it already as well
as the audience. Siegfried tells the Rhine maidens as much of it
as they will listen to, and then keeps telling it to his hunting
companions until they kill him. Wotan's autobiography on the
second evening becomes his biography in the mouths of the Norns
on the fourth. The little that the Norns add to it is repeated an
hour later by Valtrauta. How far all this repetition is tolerable
is a matter of individual taste. A good story will bear
repetition; and if it has woven into it such pretty tunes as the
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