86 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
with chalk marks, and on the other Hans Sachs holding np the 
shoes covered with the marks from his hammer blows, each inti¬ 
mating to the other that his singing had been a failure. To this 
picture, by way of concluding the second act, I added a scene con¬ 
sisting of a narrow, crooked little street in Nuremberg, with the 
people all running about in great excitement, and ultimately en¬ 
gaging in a street brawl. Thus suddenly the whole of my Meister- 
singer comedy took shape so vividly before me that, inasmuch as 
it was a particularly cheerful subject, and not in the least likely 
to overexcite my nerves, I felt I must write it out in spite of the 
doctor’s orders.” 
In Wagner’s Mitteilung an meine Freunde 3 , written six years 
later, in 1851, we learn that his intention to carry out this new 
plan was considerably strengthened by the advice of several well- 
wishers, who wanted him to compose some opera of the lighter 
kind, which would be likely to secure for his works admittance to 
all German stages and thereby win for him the outward success 
that he had so far missed and that was so necessary in his struggle 
for existence. At the same time he mentions here another aspect 
of the new plan: the Mastersinger drama was to be the humorous 
converse of the tragic contest of the Minnesingers at the Wart- 
burg, as treated in his Tannhduser, the score of which he had 
completed in the month of April, and the first performance of 
which took place on the 19th of October, 1845. Hans Sachs was 
to personify the last appearance of the artistically productive 
folk-spirit, and as such he was to be contrasted with the philistine 
mastersingers, to whose comical pedantry, bound up entirely in 
the rules of the “tablature,” Wagner expected to give a distinctly 
personal expression in the figure of the marker. 
The Marienbad sketch of the Meistersinger was jotted down 
July 16, 1845. 4 The Mitteilung an meine Freunde contains a 
synopsis of the plan from which the general reading public re¬ 
ceived its first knowledge of the subject. The final and defini¬ 
tive execution adheres quite closely to this first sketch, so far as 
the general outward course of the action is concerned, but presents 
vital departures in a number of points, especially in the charac¬ 
terization of Sachs and the youthful hero. The internal changes 
are indeed so incisive that Wagner, when toward the close of the 
3 Gesammelte Schriften, 4, 284 ff. (References to second and subsequent edi¬ 
tions.) 
4 It is printed in full in Sdmtliche Schriften , 11, 344ft. 
