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Stand forth to-day and sing, do, and see how you prosper. Beaten and bruised as I am, I shall certainly manage to throw you out of time!" Sachs has unperturbedly let him spend himself. "My good friend, you are labouring under a delusion. You are free to attribute to me what actions you please... but I have not the least thought of competing." "Lies and deceit!" roars Beckmesser, "I know better!"
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!"
Sachs quietly repeats his statement. "What else I have in mind is no affair of yours. But concerning the contest you are in error." "Not in the contest? No competition-song?" "Certainly not." Beckmesser produces the piece of music. "Is that your hand?" "Yes," Sachs owns, amused; "Was that it?" "I suppose you call it a biblical lay?"
"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.
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.
The instrumentation is delicate, almost ethereal in fact, the whole thing would be ethereal, or, at least, fairy-like, but for the note of gaiety, jollity, struck in the apprentices' tunes. But presently played-out fugue subjects are heard, and we know it is Beckmesser or no one.
A second-story window in Pogner's house has softly opened, a form is dimly outlined within the frame of it. "I am lost now," Beckmesser desperately reflects, "if he goes on singing!" He resolutely steps up to Sachs: "Friend Sachs, just listen to one word! How bent you seem upon those shoes! I truly had forgotten all about them.
Beckmesser attempts to get through his song and dismally fails. Walter follows him with the beautiful prize-song, "Morgenlich leuchtend in rosigem Schein." He wins the day and the hand of Eva. Hans Sachs! "Der Ring des Nibelungen," a trilogy, the subject taken from the Nibelungen Lied and adapted by the composer, was first conceived by Wagner during the composition of "Lohengrin."
The story is not only one of love as between Walter and Eva, but of satirical protest as between Walter and Beckmesser, and the two subjects are illustrated not only with delicate fancy but with the liveliest of humor. The work is replete with melody.
A disgusting arrangement, but Beckmesser is in such terror lest the lady leave her post before he have sung that he consents. "Begin!" hollaes Sachs, and Beckmesser, after preluding, sings, while Sachs punctuates the lines with smart taps on the last.
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