112 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
tinguish. And worse than all this, the aristocratic hoodlums re¬ 
fused to allow any one else to enjoy, and would not tolerate the 
thought that that which to them was 4 jumbling discord, seven times 
confounded’ might be a succession of harmonies to one whose per¬ 
ceptions were more fully developed.” 
Some of the criticisms that Beckmesser and a few of the other 
masters hurl at Walter’s trial song sound as though Wagner had 
taken them bodily from the paragraphs of the daily press dealing 
with his works. But, it should be noted, there is, thanks to his 
humor, not a trace of bitterness in Wagner’s treatment of these 
matters, he has risen superior to it all. 
The comedy character of the play demanded imperatively the 
introduction of a figure of the type of Beckmesser. Wagner had 
to show where mastersong, as the representative of formalism in 
art, in its ultimate consequences would lead. And if we grant the 
poet’s right of using his personal experiences, Beckmesser had to 
resort to theft in order to show what would become of Wagner’s 
art in the hands of those that were called but not elect. A cer¬ 
tain, if you will a large, amount of caricature and overdrawing is 
present in this figure, but in Wagner’s case it would hardly be 
appropriate to call this a concession to public taste—a good per¬ 
formance (the crucial test of every dramatic work) should also in 
the case of Beckmesser not leave an unpleasant taste in one’s 
mouth. One question which so far has not been raised by the 
commentators is this, how does a man like Beckmesser attain to 
the office of marker in the mastersingers’ guild? It seems incon¬ 
ceivable, with such men as Hans Sachs, Pogner, and Nachtigall in 
the society. Here, if anywhere, we have an unconscious concession 
to comedy, which in motivation does not appear to make such rigo¬ 
rous demands as tragedy. 
Why did Wagner choose the name of Beckmesser for this charac¬ 
ter? It is that of an historical figure, a mastersinger of Nurem¬ 
berg and contemporary of Hans Sachs, an honorable man who in 
his life had done nothing to be held up to derision. Is it the sound 
of the name which in itself strikes the ear as funny, reminding as 
it does of the fussy bleating of a goat ? The etymological meaning 
certainly has nothing to do with it. 
Walter von Stolzing! There is music in the very name. And 
indeed he seems a direct descendant of Walter von der Yogel- 
weide, the greatest lyrical genius of the German Middle Ages. For 
he is a poet, not merely a rhymester, but one who has something 
