114 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters . 
sparkled in the old. 28 Still the final effect after Hans Sachs’s ad¬ 
dress is one of perfect harmony, and we feel that now Walter has 
indeed bowed to the older poet’s matnrer insight and judgment, 
and is not simply submitting to the wish of Sachs that he refrain 
from hurting the feelings of his elders. There is a beautiful sym¬ 
bolism of enduring value in the final scene, when Walter accepts 
the mastersingers’ chain and Eva places Walter’s crown on Sachs’s 
head, and the orchestra bursts forth in magnificent strains glorify¬ 
ing the union of the new art and the old. The old art willingly 
and happily passes on its laurel to the new, and the new is willing 
and happy to recognize what there is of intrinsic worth in the old— 
just as Goethe and Schiller in Rietschel’s monument instinctively 
grasp the same wreath. 
Hans Sachs’s great speech at the close of the play, in which the 
influence of Gervinus’s vigorous portrait can be distinctly traced, 
is, as we have seen, contained also in the first draft of Die Meister- 
singer. But one who is familiar only with the final version can¬ 
not help being surprised by the passage quoted above, “Thereby 
he assuages the mastersingers, and wins them over.” For in the 
play as we have it today, Sachs’s leadership in the guild as well 
as among the population of Nuremberg at large admits of no doubt. 
Not so, however, the Hans Sachs of the Marienbad sketch. A man 
who can advise an ardent lover of poetry like the young knight 
there depicted to give up writing verses altogether, cannot feel so 
sure of his ground as to become the recognized leader of his master- 
singer associates. The sketch says, 4 ‘ They have their scruples about 
him and doubt whether he means honorably by the guild. . . . 
His conduct at times seems dubious to the masters.” Eva warns 
Walter against him, “Do not trust him, he is a false man! . . . 
Father has often told me.” This trait must appear passing 
strange to any one who calls to mind even a few of the outward 
signs of the charming relation between the aged master and fair 
Eva, such as their playful chat in the second act (entirely lacking 
If we wish to allow for the autobiographical element in this, the interpre¬ 
tation would be easy enough. Wagner says to his opponents, “Gentlemen, the 
moment I make up my mind, I am master of the form you worship, and I can 
handle it even better than you!” Was not the quintet in the first part of the 
third act born of this spirit? Some interpreters call it a concesssion to the 
old operatic form. No doubt Wagner here deviates from his musical theory. 
But the beauty of this quintet, which has rightly been said to dwarf any simi¬ 
lar effort in all musical literature, is likely to reconcile even an extreme theorist 
with this departure from the composer’s principles. 
