88 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
through, and declares the young knight’s efforts to have been an 
utter failure. Walter tries to defend himself, in his anguish begs 
for another chance, and finally cries out in the greatest despair, 
“Have mercy, masters!” and “rushes away as though annihi¬ 
lated.” 
When in the second act Walter meets Eva again, he gives vent 
to this despondency and bitterness, and also to his disappointment 
in the mastersingers ’ ways. In his desperate state of mind he 
plans and attempts to abduct his lady-love, but Hans Sachs, who 
has taken a fancy to him, frustrates this bold scheme, with the 
best of intentions for the young couple. At the same time Sachs 
utilizes the opportunity to vex and get even with the marker. 
Beckmesser, intending to humiliate Sachs, has twitted him for not 
finishing a pair of shoes that he had ordered from him. Now when 
in the night prior to the great singing-contest the marker serenades 
the girl with the song with which on the next day he hopes to 
triumph over his rivals, Sachs, whose workshop is just opposite 
Pogner’s house, likewise starts a loud song, since, as he explains 
to the angry marker, he must sing in order to keep himself awake 
when working so late at night; and no one knows better than 
Beckmesser himself that the job must be done forthwith, for has 
he not just a few hours since reminded Master Sachs most forcibly 
that he is neglecting his duty as cobbler for the sake of his poetic 
attempts. At last he promises the unfortunate marker that he 
will stop singing, only the latter must permit him to indicate the 
mistakes that he detects in Beckmesser’s song in his own way, as 
a shoemaker, by a hammer-stroke on the shoe over the last. Beck¬ 
messer sings, and Sachs uses his hammer very liberally. The 
critical taps on the lapstone thoroughly infuriate and confuse the 
marker, but all that he elicits from Sachs is the placid question 
whether he is done. “Not nearly!” the marker cries, and Sachs 
laughing holds up the shoes, the job having been finished merely 
by the hammer markings. Beckmesser now bellows forth the re¬ 
mainder of his song without a pause, and fails most woefully in 
the eyes of the female figure at the window. David has recognized 
the latter as his beloved Magdalene and rushes out to fall upon 
the singer, the noise calls out the other neighbors, and a battle 
royal is the result. During this brawl Hans Sachs thwarts the at¬ 
tempt of Walter to abduct Eva, and takes him into his house. 
On the next morning we listen to a long monolog of Sachs as 
he sits in the bright sunlight, leaning back in his armchair, sur¬ 
rounded with books, a large volume on his knees, on which he 
props up his arm while he muses on the state and condition of 
poetry: “Is the fair art really coming to an end? Is it possible 
that I, a shoemaker, should be the only one to breathe in the realm 
of the great German past?” He continues philosophizing on the 
decline of poetry, and sinks into a brooding mood, asking himself 
whether his trade could dishonor him,—no indeed, for does it not 
