I
The "argument of The Master-singers" is effectually given in the
Overture: Art and Love. The Masters are first--a little pompously,
as befits their pretensions,--presented to us. Then Young Love
sweeps across the scene, delicate musical gale. The themes of the
two then mingle, foreshadowing how the affairs of Walther shall
become entangled with those of the Guild.
This Walther von Stolzing, a young Franconian noble, last of his
line, had for reasons which are not given forsaken the ancestral
castle and come to Nuremberg in the intention of becoming a citizen
there. He had brought letters to a prominent burgher of the town,
Veit Pogner, the rich goldsmith, long acquainted with his family, and
known to it, by reputation. Pogner had offered him every courtesy,
hospitality, and assistance in the business of selling his Franconian
lands.
Walther had found twenty-four hours in Nuremberg and Pogner's house
ample time to fall deeply, transcendingly, rapturously, in love
with the goldsmith's daughter. She is very young, very feminine,
even in the respect of being little rather than large, so that she
is always called, fondly, Evchen, little Eva. Her name is perhaps
meant to indicate her quality of inveterate femineity. The whole
story goes to show that she was pretty enough to turn heads young
and old. She had been an obedient, an exemplary daughter, up to
the hour of meeting Walther, allowing her father to think for her,
accepting demurely his views for her. How should she not feel it
best, so long as her immature heart had never spoken a word, to
let a most kind and indulgent parent, whose wisdom it was not for
her to question, dispose of her hand in the manner he thought most
fitting? When she had seen Walther, however, a new light illumined
her position.
On the second day of his acquaintance with her, it seemed to the
young lord that he could not live through another night but he made
sure of one point. He followed his lady to vespers, in the hope of
an opportunity to exchange one private word, ask one question. It was
the eve of Saint John's day. The congregation when the curtain rises
is concluding an anthem to the "noble Baptist." Eva and Magdalene,
her nurse, are in one of the pews that fill the nave of the church.
Walther stands in the aisle, leaning against a pillar, from which
position he can watch the fair one. He tries whenever her eyes
stray his way, as, irresistibly attracted, they frequently do,
to convey to her by glance and gesture his prayer for a moment's
interview. Magdalene feels herself repeatedly obliged to recall
her young lady's attention to the church-service. The congregation
rises at last and flocks to the church-door. Walther steps before
the two women as they are passing forth with the rest, with the
hurried demand to Eva for a word, a single word. Magdalene, who is
a step behind, has not caught his request. Eva with quick resource
sends her back to the pew for her forgotten kerchief. But Walther
has become alarmed at his own boldness, and instead of utilising
his opportunity to utter or obtain that "single word," falls to
pouring forth many disconnected words by way of leading up to the
all-important question. He has not contrived to get it out before
Magdalene returns. But Eva then discovers that her brooch too has
been left in the pew. Walther, because he really dreads to hear
an answer which may dash his dearest hopes, makes no better use
of this second chance than of the first; he is still leading up
to his famous question when Magdalene brings the brooch. But upon
this fortune favours him, Magdalene must run back to the pew for
her forgotten prayer-book; and in the brief interval of her search
Walther asks breathlessly of Eva: if she be already betrothed! She
does not reply by the instantaneous negative he had hoped for, and
the passionate wish breaks from his lips that he had never crossed
the threshold of her father's house! Magdalene, who has rejoined
them, bridles indignantly at such an expression from him. "How now,
my lord, what is this you say? Scarce arrived in Nuremberg, were
you not hospitably received? Is not the best afforded by kitchen and
cellar, cupboard and store-room, deserving of any gratitude whatever?"
Eva tries to silence her: "That is not what he meant, good Lene.
But... this information he desires of me--How am I to say it? I
hardly myself understand! I feel as if I were dreaming--He wishes
to know whether I am already betrothed?" Lene at this recognises, of
course, that here is that reprobate thing, a lover, and remembers
her first duty as a duenna, to keep off all such from her young
charge. She is for hurrying home at once. Walther resolutely detains
her. "Not till I know all!"--"The church is empty, every one is
gone!" Eva gives as a reason for not being so punctilious. Lene
sees in the very loneliness of the place a reason the more for
departing with all speed,--but Fate again helps Walther. David,
a youthful shoe-maker's apprentice, enters the church from the
vestry, and falls to making mysterious preparations, drawing curtains
which shut off the nave of the church, measuring distances on the
pavement with a yard-rule. No sooner has Magdalene caught sight of
him than she becomes absent-minded, and when Eva urges, "What am
I to tell him? Do you tell me what I am to say!" more good-humoured
than before, she vouchsafes: "Your lordship, the question you ask of
the damsel is not so easy to answer. As a matter of truth, Evchen
Pogner is betrothed----" "But no one," quickly adds the girl, "has as
yet see the bridegroom!" He gathers from the two that the bridegroom
shall be the victor on the following day in a song-contest, the
master-singer to whom the other master-singers award the prize,
and whom the bride herself crowns. It all falls strangely on the
ears of one not a Nuremberger. "The master-singer?..." he falters.
"Are you not one?" Eva asks incredulously, wistfully. And when in his
effort to grasp the situation exactly he continues asking questions,
she answers his interrogative: "The bride then chooses?..." with
complete forgetfulness of every maidenly convention, by an ardent,
honest "You, or no one!"--"Are you gone mad?" Magdalene grasps her
arm, shocked and flustered. She has, and feels no shame. "Good
Lene, help me to win him!"--"But you saw him yesterday for the first
time!" No, she became a victim so readily to love's torment, Eva
tells Lene, because she had long known him in a picture, Albrecht
Dürer's painting of David, after the slaying of Goliath, his sword
at his belt, his sling in his hand, his head brightly encircled
with fair curls.
Joyful agitation has seized the Knight at Eva's sweet impulsive
word, and, with it, bewilderment as to what must be his course in
circumstances so unprecedented. He restlessly paces the pavement,
trying to determine how he shall deal with the strange conditions
raising their barrier between him and the object of his desire.
Magdalene calls to her the object of hers. The middle-aged spinster
has a weak spot in her heart for David. The boyish shoe-maker's
apprentice on his side adores her--and the pleasant bits she maternally
smuggles to him from Pogner's kitchen. Questioned, he informs her
that he is making the place ready for the master-singers. There is
to be directly a song-trial: such song-apprentices as commit no
offence against the table of rules are to be promoted to mastership.
Here would be the Knight's chance, reflects Lene,--his one chance
to be made master before the fateful morrow. When, as they are
leaving, Walther offers the ladies his company to Master Pognet's,
she bids him wait rather for Pogner where he stands: if he wishes
to enter the contest for Evchen's hand, Fortune has favoured him
with respect to time and place. "What am I to do?" asks the lover
eagerly. David shall instruct him, and Magdalene herself instructs
David to make himself useful to the Knight. "Something choice from
the kitchen I will save for you. And if the young lord here shall
to-day be made a master, you may to-morrow proffer your requests
full boldly!"
"Shall I see you again?" Eva shyly asks of Walther, as Magdalene is
hurrying her off. His answer gives the keynote of him, characteristic
outburst that it is of his vital, vigourous, enthusiastic youth,
to which all things seem possible--beautiful youth, which has the
splendour and force of fire, with the freshness of flowers; which
flashes like a sword and trembles like a lute-string. "Shall I
see you again?" It is after vespers. "This evening, surely!" he
replies: "How shall I tell you what I would be willing to undertake
for your sake? New is my heart, new is my mind, new to me is all
this which I am entering upon. One thing only I know, one thing
only I grasp, that I will devote soul and senses to winning you!
If it may not be with the sword, I must achieve it with song, and
as a master sing you mine! For you, my blood and my possessions,
for you, the sacred aspiration of a poet!" Strains from this sweet
and proud profession are scattered all through the story, they
are the Walther-motifs, heard in his first sigh as he watches her
from the shadow of the church-pillar, and woven finally into his
prize-song. And the effect of youth that goes magically with them!
The fragrance that belongs to them, with the fire! As of green
things in early May, wet with the dew of dawn,--the beams of the
rising sun kindling all to a softly-dazzling glory. The hearer
feels himself young too with an immortal youth.... But words are
never so ineffectual as when they would translate music.
When Walther and Eva part, they are candidly lovers, for she has
joined her voice to his at the closing words of his profession, and
herself warmly professed: "My heart with its blessed ardour,--for
you, its love-consecrated kindness!" In a moment the women are
gone. Walther casts himself in a great high-backed carved seat
which apprentices have a moment before placed in the conspicuous
position it occupies, and is absorbed in the attempt to collect
himself, deal with his swarming emotions, order his wild thoughts,
scheme what to do. The excited blood in his veins sings the song
of his youth.
Apprentices in number, lively and mischievous imps, have entered and
are setting the place aright for the meeting of the master-singers,
placing seats for these on one side and forms for themselves on the
opposite side, arranging near the centre a platform and blackboard
enclosed by curtains. David stands studying that original who supposes
one can be made a master in an hour. The gentleman's rank and fine
feathers do not impress the youth, who feels himself rather, with
respect to the requirements of the hour, in a position to patronise.
Walther is startled to hear him suddenly shout: "Begin!" "What is
the matter?" he inquires, waking out of his dream. "Begin! That is
what the Marker calls out, and then you must sing. Don't you know
that?"--"Who is the Marker?"--"Don't you know? Have you never been
to a song-trial?"--"Never, where the judges were artisans."--"Are
you a poet?"--"Would that I were!"--"Are you a singer?"--"Would that
I knew!"--"But you have at least been a 'school-frequenter' and
a 'pupil?'"--"It all sounds foreign to my ear!"--"And you wish to
become a master, off-hand, like that?"--"What enormous difficulty
does the matter present?"--David groans: "Oh, Lene, Lene... oh,
Magdalene!"--"What a to-do you make! Come, tell me, in good faith,
what I must do!" David has now the chance he loves. Here is one
who knows nothing whatever of the things it is his pride to have
learned at least the names of, the things to a Nuremberger worth
knowing among all. The ignoramus shall be properly dazzled. David
strikes an attitude. "Myself," he informs Walther, "I am learning
the Art from the greatest master in Nuremberg, Hans Sachs. For a
full year I have received his instructions. Shoe-making and poetry
I learn simultaneously. When I have pounded the leather even and
smooth, I learn of vowel-sounds and of consonance. When I have
waxed the thread hard and stiff, I apply myself to the rules of
rhyme. While punching holes and driving the awl, I commit the science
of rhythm and number...." And so forth. For a full year he has
been learning, and how far does Walther suppose he has got? The
Knight suggests, laughing: "To the making of a right good pair
of shoes!" Nay, this top-lofty aristocrat, with his jokes, does
not in the least understand! And David enlarges further on the
great and various difficulties in the way of him who aspires to
become a master-singer. A "bar," let him know, has manifold parts
and divisions, full difficult to master the law thereof!... And
then comes the "after-song," which must not be too short, nor yet
too long, and must contain no rhyme already used in the foregoing
stanzas. But even when a person has learned and knows all this,
even then he is not yet called a master. For there are a thousand
subtleties and refinements the aspirant must still make his own.
Whether David in showing off draws a bit upon his fancy, or whether
the master-singers really cherished these distinctions in mode and
tone, one can but wonder. Suggestive the titles of them certainly
are. Glibly, grandly, and with a rich relish, David tells them off:
The fool's-cap, the black-ink mode; the red, blue and green tones;
the hawthorn-blossom, straw-wisp, fennel modes; the tender, the sweet,
the rose-coloured tone; the short-lived love, the deserted-lover
tones; the rosemary, the golden lupine, the rainbow, the nightingale
modes; the English tin, the stick-cinnamon modes; the fresh orange,
green linden-blossom modes; the frogs', the calves', the goldfinch
modes; the mode--save the mark!--of the secret gormandiser; the
lark, the snail tones; the barking tone; the balsam, the marjoram
modes; the tawny lion-fell, the faithful pelican modes; the respendent
gold-galloon mode! Walther cries out to Heaven for help. "Those,"
proceeds David, "are only the names! Now learn to sing them exactly
as the masters have established, every word and tone sounding clearly,
the voice rising and falling as it should...." etc., etc., etc.;
"but if, when you have done all these things correctly, you should
make a mistake, or in any wise stumble and flounder, whatever your
success up to that moment, you would have failed in the song-trial!
In spite of great diligence and application, myself I have not
brought it to that point. Let me be an example to you, and drop
this folly of seeking to be made a master!"
Walther, persisting in inquiry, conquers the information at last
that in order to be named a master a man must compose an original
poem and fit it to an original air, in accordance with the many
laws laid down by his judges. "All there is for me to do then,"
concludes the lover, nothing discouraged, "is to aim directly at
mastership. If I am to sing successfully, I must find, to verses of
my own, a melody of my own!" David, who has joined the apprentices,
fends off their teasing by privately preparing them for rich diversion
presently at the song-trial. "Not I to-day, another fellow is up
for trial! He has not been a 'pupil' and is not a 'singer'; the
formality of earning the title of 'poet' he says he will omit;
for he is a gentleman of quality, and expects, with one leap and
no further difficulty, this very day to become a master. Wherefore
arrange carefully the Marker's cabinet; the blackboard on the wall,
convenient to the Marker's hand.... The Marker, yes!" he repeats
bodingly to the not sufficiently impressed knight. "Are you not
afraid? Many a candidate already, singing before him, has met with
failure. He allows you seven errors; he marks them there with chalk;
whoever makes more than seven errors has completely and conclusively
failed!" The apprentices in their glee over the prospective
entertainment join hands and dance in a ring around the curtained
recess where the Marker shortly shall be chronicling the slips
and blunders of this self-confident lordling.
Their play is interrupted, and they hurriedly put on good behaviour,
at the entrance of two of the masters, Pogner and Sixtus Beckmesser,
the town-clerk. The change in the music is definite as a change
of air and scene, is like passing from the hubbub of the street
into some calm and pleasant precinct. Beckmesser is importuning
Pogner with regard to his intentions for the morrow. Beckmesser
wishes extremely to become his son-in-law, wherefore he thinks it
would be best to give the young lady no choice, to decree simply
and finally that the winner of the prize for song should be her
husband. He feels cocksure of his superiority as a master-singer,
but dubious, it would seem, of his power to enthrall the fancy of
a young girl. "If Evchen's voice can strike out the candidate,
of what use to me is my supremacy as a master?"--"Come," replies
Pogner sensibly, "if you have no hopes of the daughter's regard,
how do you come to enter the lists as her suitor?" Beckmesser,
after this check, cannot, of course, urge anything further in the
same direction. He begs for Pogner's influence with his child, and
turns away disgusted with the goldsmith's merely civil assent.
It seems to him that a man like Pogner ought to know as well as
he knows that women have no real taste, that they are capable of
preferring the sorriest stuff to all the poetry in the world. How
shall he, Beckmesser, avoid a disappointment, a public defeat? He
decides upon reflection to try the prize-song he has prepared,
as a serenade, and make sure beforehand that the maiden will be
pleased with it.
Walther has approached and exchanged greetings with Pogner. He
comes directly to the point, and, with airy aplomb, "If truth must
be told," he says, "the thing which drove me from home and brought
me to Nuremberg was the love of Art, nothing else! I forgot to
tell you this yesterday--but to-day I proclaim it aloud. It is
my desire to become a master-singer. Receive me, master, in the
guild!"
The masters are flocking in, bakers, tailors, coppersmiths, grocers,
weavers. Pogner turns to them, delighted. "Hear, what a very interesting
case. The knight here, my friend, is desirous of dedicating himself
to our Art. It seems like the olden days come back!--You can hardly
think," to Walther, "how glad I am! As willingly indeed as ever I
lent you my assistance to sell your land, I will receive you in
the guild!"--"What man is that?" Beckmesser almost barks, catching
sight of Walther. Suspiciously he observes him: "I do not like
him.... What is he doing here? How his eyes beam with laughter!...
Look sharp, Sixtus, keep an eye on that fellow!"
"And may I hope," asks Walther of Pogner, "to have this very day
an opportunity to undergo trial and be elected master?"--"Oho!"
soliloquises Beckmesser, with a shock of surprise at audacity such
as this, "on that head stands no skittle!" There is no moss growing
on him! Pogner is no doubt surprised too, but answers kindly: "The
matter must be conducted according to rule. To-day, however, as
it happens, is song-trial. I will propose you. The masters lend
a favourable ear to requests of mine."
The masters are assembled; last of all has entered Hans Sachs, the
shoe-maker,--dear, benignantly-gazing Hans Sachs. "Are we all here?"
asks one of the members. "Sachs is here! What more is necessary?"
sneers Beckmesser.
Fritz Kothner, the baker, in the capacity of speaker, calls the
roll. As the meeting is about to pass to the business of the day,
Pogner asks for the floor, and unfolds before the assembled guild
his romantic scheme: The following is Saint John's day, when it
is customary for the master-singers to hold a song-contest out
in the open, among the people, the victorious singer receiving a
prize. "Now I, by God's grace, am a rich man, and every one should
give according to his means. I cast about therefore for a gift
to give not unworthy of me. Hear what I determined upon. In my
extensive travels over Germany, I have often been chagrined to
find that the burgher is held cheap, is thought close-fisted and
mean-minded. Among high and low alike, I heard the bitter reproach,
till I was soul-sick of it,--that the burgher has no aim or object
above commerce and the getting of money. That we alone in the whole
kingdom of Germany are the guardians and preservers of art, they
take into no account. To what point we place our honour in that,
with what a lofty spirit we cherish the good and beautiful, how
highly we prize art and its influence, I wished therefore to show
the world. So hear, Masters, the gift which I have appointed for
prize: To the singer who in the song-contest shall before all the
people win the prize on Saint John's day, let him be who he may,
I give, devotee of art that I am, Veit Pogner of Nuremberg, with
my whole inheritance, even as it stands, Eva, my only child, in
marriage!"
Loud applause. "There is a man for you!... There is talk of the
right sort!... There one sees what a Nuremberger is capable of!...
Who would not wish to be a bachelor?..." "I dare say that some,"
suggests Sachs, "would not mind giving away their wives!"
But there is a postscript to Pogner's address which qualifies the
aspect of the whole: The maiden shall have the right to reject
the masters' choice. That is what has from the first bothered
Beckmesser, in Pogner's counsel before this making public of his
idea. The general mood is changed by this revelation. "Does it
strike you as judicious?" Beckmesser privately consults Kothner;
"Dangerous I call it!"--"Do I understand aright," asks Kothner;
"that we are placed in the hands of the young lady? If the
master-singers' verdict then does not agree with hers, how is it
to operate?"--"Let the young lady choose at once according to the
inclination of her heart, and leave master-singing out of the game!"
remarks Beckmesser tartly. "Not at all! Not at all!" Pogner strives
to calm them, "Not in the very least! You have imperfectly understood.
The maiden may refuse the one to whom you master-singers award the
prize, but she may not choose another. A master-singer he must
be. Only one crowned by yourselves may become a suitor for her."
The arrangement does seem, closely considered, rather hard on the
young lady, and one fancies more than once, in the course of the
play, a shade of sheepishness in the father's own attitude toward
it,--momentary ripples of misgiving.
A voice of beautiful, calm, corrective sanity is now raised in
the assembly. "Your pardon!" speaks Sachs to Pogner, "you have
perhaps already gone somewhat far. The heart of a young girl and
the heart aglow for master-art do not always burn with an identical
flame. Feminine judgment, untutored as it is, would seem to me
on a level with popular judgment. If therefore you have in mind
to show the people how highly you honour art, and if, leaving to
your daughter the right of choice, you wish her not to repudiate
the verdict, let the people be among the judges, for the people's
taste is sure to coincide with the girl's."
Indignation upon this among the masters. "The people?... That were
fine! As well say good-bye, once for all, to art!... Sachs, what
you say is nonsense.... Are the rules of art to be set aside for
the people?"--"Understand me aright!" Sachs meets them; "How you
take on! You will own that I know the rules thoroughly. For many a
year I have been at pains to keep the guild to a strict observation
of them. But once a year it would seem to me wise to test the rules
themselves, and see whether in the easy grooves of habit their
strength and vitality have not been lost. And whether you are still
upon the right track of nature you can only find out from such
as know nothing of tabulated rules!" (The apprentices, who here
represent the people, and have no great love for the _Tabulatur_,
give evidence of joy.) "Wherefore it would seem to me expedient that
yearly, at Saint John's feast, instead of permitting the people to
come to you, you should descend out of your lofty mastership-cloud,
and yourselves go to the people. You wish to please the people. It
would strike me as to the point to let the people tell you itself
whether you succeed in pleasing it. You would thus secure a vital
advantage, both for the people and for art. There you have Hans
Sachs's opinion!"
No one agrees with him, of course. "You no doubt mean well, but
it would be a mistake.... If the people is to have a voice, I,
for one, shall keep my mouth shut.... If art is to run after the
favour of the people, it cannot fail to come to grief and
contempt."--"His success would be enormous, no doubt, who urges
this matter so stiffly," Beckmesser puts in spitefully; "His
compositions are nearly all popular street-songs!"
Pogner sets Sachs's suggestion aside with perfect civility and good
humour. "The thing I am about to do is novel already. Too much novelty
at one time might bring in its wake regret...."--"Sufficient to me,"
Sachs yields the point, "is the maiden's right of refusal!"--"That
cobbler always excites my wrath!" mutters Beckmesser.
They pass to the order of the day. "Who enters the lists as a candidate?
A bachelor he must be."--"Or perhaps a widower?" offers Beckmesser;
"Ask Sachs!"--"Oh, no, master Beckmesser," Sachs retorts; "Of younger
wax than either you or I must the suitor be, if Evchen is to bestow
the prize on him!"--"Younger than I, too?... Coarse fellow!"
At the question whether any be on the spot who wish to take the
song-trial, Pogner presents Walther von Stolzing, as one desirous
of being that same day elected master-singer. The motif of Wather's
presentation gives a clear idea of the knight's charming appearance,
his grace, his elastic step, his hat and feathers, the delicate
haughtiness of his bearing, in keeping with his proud name.
A black suspicion enters Beckmesser's breast at sight of him: he is
the card which Pogner has all along had up his sleeve. The town-clerk
declares promptly that it is too late now to enter the new-comer. The
masters exchange glances: "Anoble?... Is it a case for rejoicing?
Or is there danger in it?... The fact that Master Pogner speaks for
him has its weight, certainly..."--"If he is to be welcomed among
us," says Kothner, somewhat forbiddingly, "he must show proper
recommendations."--"Do not mistake me," Pogner hastens to say;
"Though I wish him good fortune, I have no thought of waiving any
rule. Put to him, gentlemen, the customary questions." At the very
first question, however, whether he be free and honourably born,
Pogner hurriedly prevents Walther's answer by his own, making himself
voucher for him in every respect such as that. The generous Sachs,
feeling the something grudging in the attitude of the masters, reminds
them that it had long been one of the rules made by themselves that
an applicant being a lord or a peasant should have no significance,
that inquiry concerning art alone should be made of one desiring to
become a master-singer. Kothner passes thereupon to the question:
"Of what master are you a disciple?" And then is born into the world
a new, a ravishing melody--which has all the delight in it that
can be compressed into the space. Airily, confidently, debonairly,
Walther delivers himself, in the sweet ingenuousness of his heart,
"new," as he had said, ignorant as yet of the jealous world's ways:
"Beside my quiet hearth in winter-time, when castle and court were
buried in snow, in an ancient book, bequeathed to me by my fathers,
I was wont to read recorded the engaging beauties of past Springs,
as well as, prophesied, the beauties of the Spring soon to reawaken.
The poet, Walther von der Vogelweid, he it is who has been my master!"
Sachs has listened with a surprised, charmed sympathy. He nods
beamingly: "A good master!"--"But long dead!" snaps Beckmesser;
"How could he learn the canons from him?"
Kothner proceeds without comment to the next question: "In what
school did you learn to sing?"--"Then when the sward was free from
frost, and summer-time was come back, all that in the long
winter-evenings I had read in the old book was proclaimed aloud
in the luxuriance of the forest. I caught the clear sound of it
there. In the forest where the birds congregate, I learned likewise
to sing!"--"Ho, ho, from finches and tomtits you acquired the art
of master-singing?" Beckmesser jeers; "Your song no doubt smacks
of its teachers!"--"What do you think, masters," inquires Kothner,
upon this hopeless revelation, "shall I proceed with the questions?
It strikes me his lordship's answers are altogether wide of the
mark."--"That is what will presently be seen," Sachs interposes
warmly; "If his art is of the right sort, and he duly proves it, of
what consequence is it from whom he learned it?" Whereupon Kothner
proceeds, addressing Walther: "Are you prepared, now, at once,
to attempt an original master-song, new in conception, original
both in text and tune?" Walther answers unhesitatingly: "All that
winter-night and forest-splendour, that book and grove have taught
me; all that the magic of poetry has secretly revealed to me; all
that I have gathered, a thoughtful listener, from ride to battle
or from dance in gay assembly,--all this, in the present hour,
when the highest prize of life may be purchased by a song, is what
must necessarily flow into my song, original in word and note,--is
what must be outpoured before you, masters, if I succeed, as a
master-song!"
"Did you gather anything from that torrent of words?" Beckmesser
asks, with his eyebrows up among his hair, of his fellow-masters.
"Now, masters, if you please," Kothner directs, "let the Marker
take his seat. Does his lordship," to Walther, "choose a sacred
subject?" "One that is sacred to me!" the young man answers
magnificently; "The banner of Love I swing and I sing--and cherish
good hope!" "That," considers Kothner, without a gleam, "comes
under the head of secular subject. And now, Master Beckmesser,
pray shut yourself in!" With a thin pose of reluctance, Beckmesser
takes his way toward the curtained cabinet. "A sour office--and
to-day especially. The chalk, I surmise, will be troublesomely in
requisition. Know, Sir Knight, Sixtus Beckmesser is the Marker.
Here in the cabinet he attends to his stern duty. He allows you
seven errors. He marks them down in there with chalk. If you make
over seven errors, Sir Knight, you have failed in the song-trial.
Keen is the Marker's ear; that the sight of him therefore may not
disconcert you, he relieves you of his presence and considerately
shuts himself up in there--God have you in his keeping!" He has
climbed upon the platform; he sharply draws the curtains.
Two apprentices take down from the wall and bring forward the _Leges
Tabulaturoe_. With pomp and flourish Kothner reads them off to Walther.
The "tabulature" gives the straight and narrow laws upon which
a song must be constructed, to earn its singer the dignity of
mastership. "Now take your seat in the singing-chair!" Kothner
orders Walther at the close of his reading. "Here, in this chair?"
It is the tall carved chair in which he had cast himself earlier.
"As is the custom of the school!" Even so much of restraint as
the obligation to sing on a given spot is repugnant to the spirit
of the highborn youth, who yet is undertaking to satisfy the most
law-ridden assemblage he could have met with. He murmurs, taking
the seat: "For your sake, beloved, it shall be done!"--"The singer
sits!" announces Kothner. "Begin!" shouts Beckmesser out of sight.
From Beckmesser's cry "Begin!" Walther takes his cue, and simply
vaulting into the seat of his Pegasus, casting the bridle upon
the neck of inspiration, he directly before them all pours forth
his full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. He has
never committed their canons, is ignorant of their conventions;
he has genius, that is all, and its daring; is a poet born, not
made; is at the moment, beside all the rest, uplifted by the divine
fire of his love--and his song is right as some natural object,
a crystal or a flower. Consummate as is the song, it has yet the
character perfectly of an improvisation--the ideal improvisation,
let us say--the gush, the rush, the profusion of lovely ornament,
the unrestraint,--but essentially orderly, the unrestraint, like
that of an army with banners, swarming, in only apparent confusion,
up a height, to assured victory. The urge, the climbing effect
of the song, are owing, it is plain enough, to Walther's being
really inside of it, to his having cast his whole self into it,
with his straining after a goal, his desperate necessity to win.
In this case, verily the style is the man. "Begin!"--runs the sense
of that perfect song, "Thus shouted Spring in the woods, till they
rang again! And as the sound died away in distant waves, in the
distance a sound was born, drawing nearer and nearer in a mighty
flood. It grows, it resounds, the woods re-echo with a multitude
of sweet voices. Loud and clear, it sweeps anear, to what a torrent
it is grown! Like clangour of bells rings the multiple voice of
Joy! The forest, how readily it responds to the call which has
wakened it anew to life, and entones the sweet canticle of Spring!"
The Marker's chalk is not idle; a number of workmanlike scratches
have been heard. Walther has stopped short, jarred by the sound.
He resumes after a moment: "In a thorny hedge, devoured by envy
and chagrin, Winter, in his armour of ill-will, cowers in hiding.
Amid the rustling of withered leaves, he sits spying with watchful
eye and ear for a chance to bring to grief the happy singing...."
The singer bounds to his feet. "None the less, 'Begin!' The cry
rang in my breast, when I was as yet wholly unaware of love! And
in my breast I felt a deep stirring, which woke me as if from a
dream. My heart filled the chamber of my bosom with its trembling
palpitations; mightily surged my blood, its stream swollen by new
emotions; stormily out of the warm night pressed the host of
sighs,--increasing, in the wild tumult of joy, to the innumerableness
of the sea. My breast, with what rapture it responds to the call
which has wakened it to new life, and entones the lovely canticle
of Love!"
He has hardly ceased, when Beckmesser thrusts apart the curtains.
"Have you finished? I have quite finished with the blackboard!" He
holds up for inspection the blackboard, overscored on both sides
with great chalk-marks. The masters break into laughter. "Have the
goodness to listen," demands Walther imperiously; "I have only
just reached the point where my song is to publish my lady's
praise!"--"Go and sing wherever else you please. Here you have
failed." Beckmesser descends from his post, flourishing the blackboard.
"I beg you will examine, masters, this blackboard. Never since I
live has such a thing been heard of. I should not have believed
it though you had all affirmed it under oath...." Walther, in the
innocence of his youth, loudly appeals: "Do you intend to allow
him, masters, to interrupt me like this? Am I not from any one of
you to have a hearing?" Pogner's courtesy interferes: "One word,
friend Marker, are you not out of temper?" Beckmesser excitedly
proceeds to justify his chalk-marks. No beginning or end, defective
metre, defective construction! Blind meaning! Not one proper
breathing-space anywhere! No appropriate colouring--and of melody
not a vestige! Then, what a mad medley of "modes"! A mixture of
adventure-tone, blue-knightly-spurs tone, tall-pine-trees tone
and haughty-stripling tone! (Which permits the supposition that
David, though moved by the desire to amaze, was yet a faithful
reporter of the refinements of master-singing.) The master-singers
agree readily with Beckmesser, are really relieved to find their
impressions boldly put into form for them by him. Not one of them
has understood anything. Walther's unprecedented leaping to his
feet in the heat of inspiration has given offence to this one;
the other terms his singing "empty battering at the ear-drums."
They are about to subscribe unanimously to Beckmesser's verdict
that he has lost his case, when Sachs's voice breaks in upon the
confusion. He has listened to Walther in complete self-forgetful
absorption. The absence of all jealousy in his large nature leaves
his mind peculiarly open for genuine first-hand impressions; his
wide understanding is not repelled by the new and strange. The close
of the young man's song has found him won, enlisted, prepossessed.
He calls the masters to halt. "Not every one shares in your opinion!
The Knight's song struck me as novel, yet not confused; although
he forsook the beaten track, he strode along with firm, unerring
step...." Sachs nods to himself and beams at this reviewing of
the intense pleasure he has just experienced. "When you find that
you have been trying to measure by your own rules that which does
not lie within the compass of your rules, the thing to do is to
forget your rules and try to discover the rules of that which you
wish to measure!" Which sage talk is not destined to be fruitfully
heard in the agitation of prejudice, alarm, and dislike possessing
the majority of the masters. "Oh, very well," fumes Beckmesser,
"Now you have heard him: Sachs offering a loophole to bunglers,
that they may slip in and out at will and flourish at ease. Sing
to the people as much as you please, in marketplace and street;
here no one shall gain admission save in accordance with rule!"
Sachs insists that Walther must be heard to the end. "The guild of
the masters, the whole body," chafes Beckmesser, "are as nothing
counterbalanced by Sachs!" "God forbid," speaks Sachs, "that I should
desire anything contrary to the guild's laws; but among those very
laws it stands written that the Marker shall be so chosen that
neither love nor hate may influence his judgment. Now, if the Marker
go on lover's feet, how should he not yield to the temptation of
bringing a rival to derision before the assembled school?" Beckmesser
flares up, trembling with rage. "What concern of Master Sachs's is
it on what sort of feet I go? Let him sooner turn his attention to
making me shoes that will not hurt my toes. But since my shoe-maker
has become a mighty poet, it's a sorry business with my foot-wear.
See there, all down at the heel, the sole half off and shuffling!
His many verses and rhymes I would cheerfully dispense with, likewise
his tales, his plays, and his comical pieces, if he would just
bring me home my new shoes for to-morrow!" The thrust tells. Sachs
scratches his ear a little ruefully, but is not found quite without
a word to say. The excuse he advances is that while it is his custom
to write a verse on the sole of every shoe he delivers, he has
not yet found a verse worthy of the learned town-clerk. "But,"
by a turn of the conversation directing it to a use nearer his
heart, "I very likely shall catch inspiration from the Knight,"
he says, "when I have heard the whole of his song! Wherefore let
him sing further undisturbed. Sing!" Slyly smiling he makes sign
to Walther, "Sing, in Master Marker's despite!"
Walther springs to the singing-chair, but the masters cry in a
voice, "An end! An end!" Walther, undaunted, climbs to his feet
upon the very seat of the sacred chair, from which he commands
the assembly by half his height and haughtily looks down upon it.
And he sings with all his lungs and all his fire to make himself
heard above the hubbub; he sings, determined to impose the impress
of himself upon their minds, will they or not; and his tenor pierces
through and floats over the snarling chorus of objection; and he
sings his song, in spite of them all, to the very end. "From the
dark thorn-hedge rustles forth the owl, and by his hooting rouses
the hoarse choir of the ravens; in night-black swarm they gather,
and croak aloud with their hollow voices, magpies, crows, and daws!
But thereupon soars upward on a pair of golden wings, wonderful,
a Bird: his clearly-shining plumage gleams bright aloft in the
air, rapturously he soars hither and thither, inviting me to join
him in flight. My heart expands with a delicious pain, my longing
to fly creates wings. I swing myself heavenward in daring flight,
away from that death-vault, the city, away to the hills of home;
thence to the green forest, meeting-place of birds, where long
ago Walther, the Poet, won my allegiance. There sing I clear and
loud the praise of my dearest lady, there mounts upward, little
as Master Crows may relish it, the proud canticle of love!"
All this while the confusion of voices has not ceased or diminished.
Beckmesser has been heatedly, in support of his chalk-marks, going
over Walther's literary misdemeanours: Defective versification,
unpronounceable words, misplaced rhymes, etc. etc. The masters
have been vociferously criticising and rejecting the new-comer.
Pogner has looked on and taken no part, a dejected spectator. He
is sorry to see the Knight defeated, and he says to himself that
he knows he will regret his toleration of this high-handedness of
the masters. For the natural thought has risen in his mind that
it would be agreeable to have this fine fellow received in the
guild, and subsequently into his family as son-in-law. Upon which
thought naturally follows the other: "The victor whom I now must
fall back upon, who knows if my child will care for him? I confess
to a degree of uneasiness as to whether Eva will choose that master!"
Sachs alone has listened through all the manifold disturbance--has
intently, delightedly listened; has loved the boy's courage, and
marvelled at the force of his inspiration; has besought the masters
to keep still and listen, or at least to let others listen.... "No
use! It is labour lost! One can hardly hear his own words. The
Knight can not from one of them gain attention!... That is what
I call courage, to go on singing like that! His heart is in the
right place,--a very giant of a poet. I, Hans Sachs, make verses and
shoes, but he is a Knight and a poet on top of it!" The apprentices,
emboldened by the general disorder, add their voices to the others,
attempting to drown out the singer so fierily, unremittingly singing
from his post of vantage. They join hands again and dance in circle
around the Marker's platform.
Through all this, over all this, the stubborn song, not for a moment
weakening or wavering, has climbed its way, with the figurative
Bird, to its climax-point. His throat shall burst, but he will
be heard! His last note Walther holds for four bars: "_Das stolze
Lie----bes Lied!_"... Sung to an end it is, the lofty canticle of
love. The singer jumps down from the chair. "A lasting farewell to
you, my masters!" With a proud gesture, which rids him of them forever
and consigns them to the dust-heap of their sordid narrowness and
mediocrity, he stalks to the door. "_Versungen und verthan! Versungen
und verthan!_" cry the masters, raising their hands according to
custom in giving a vote; "_Versungen und verthan!_" He has failed
in song, he is done with!
The song-trial is over. The apprentices in merry tumult take apart
the Marker's closet, hurry off benches and seats, rapidly clearing
the church of all signs of the meeting. The masters leave, except
Sachs. He stands gazing abstractedly at the singing-chair, while
a snatch of Walther's song sings itself over in his memory. His
meditation is interrupted by the apprentices snatching up and carrying
off the chair. With a half-melancholy smile and a gesture of delicate
mockery at himself for the spell he has so completely fallen under,
reluctantly the last master-singer turns to the door, and the curtain
falls.