Boedder—“Die Meistersinger von NurnbergK” 97 
to witness a performance of the plays of his predecessors, no mat¬ 
ter how good they might be in themselves. 
The first scene takes place in Sachs’s shop. The journeymen are 
busy working; Gorg, the apprentice, has fallen asleep over his job 
and is unceremoniously, by a blow with the stirrup, awakened by 
the others, who flout his pretensions to proficiency in poetry, his 
master’s art. When the hour to stop work for the day has come, 
Gorg, remaining behind alone, detects a manuscript of his master’s, 
a poem written for the occasion of his sweetheart’s birthday, which 
Gorg purloins, in order to read it to his beloved Kordula, the cou¬ 
sin of Sachs’s lady-love Kunigunde, daughter of Master Steffen, 
the goldsmith. An unknown visitor, Emperor Maximilian, enters 
to pay his respects to Sachs, whose poetry, he tells him, the monarch 
and the whole court appreciate very highly. Sachs, who has en¬ 
tered from the garden, can at first scarcely believe such good news, 
which indemnifies him for many hours of grief in his unapprecia¬ 
tive native city. He is now in the right mood to compose his 
prize poem for the competition that is to take place on the next 
day. Then, as he is about to leave for Master Steffen’s house, 
Eoban Hesse 15 , an Augsburg councillor and also a mastersinger, 
demands his professional services in repairing a hole in his shoe. 
While Gorg attends to the job, with many facetious remarks at the 
stranger’s expense, Sachs learns from the latter’s words his real 
purpose in coming to Nuremberg: Master Steffen has promised him 
the hand of his daughter, and Sachs’s happiness seems short-lived. 
Kunigunde, whom we meet in the next scene in her father’s gar¬ 
den, is very much distressed at Eoban’s wooing, but the energetic 
Kordula encourages her, and Sachs, who with Gorg appears for 
his visit, is confident of his success in next day’s competition, 
which he thinks will win over Kunigunde’s father. But the 
haughty Master Steffen, unfortunately, is just now apprised of his 
election as burgomaster, and Eoban is quick to enter complaint 
against the shoemaker, from whose own mouth he has heard of his 
love for Kunigunde. In the contest Sachs sings 16 the praise of 
15 Helius Eobanus Hesse—or Hessus, since according to the custom of the 
scholars of his time he Latinized his name—was a noted German humanist 
(1488-1540), who wrote Latin poetry of marvelous elegance of form and 
since 1526 held the chair of poetics in the newly founded Nuremberg univer¬ 
sity. To his contemporaries he was best known through his Bohemian habits 
and his stupendous feats in drinking. His portrait, preserved in a sixteenth 
century woodcut, shows him as a handsome middle-aged man of serious mien. 
Being a writer of Latin verses, he naturally would have laughed at the idea 
of ever joining the mastersingers. 
16 Or rather speaks, except the last line, which is sung. This is one of the 
inexplicable oddities of the opera, and proves that the authors knew very little 
about the rules of mastersong. To the mastersingers the tune was everything, 
and the text was of very subordinate consideration. Cf. Gervinus, in the 
Appendix. 
7—S. A. Li. 
