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Updated: September 18, 2025
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?"
In the third act Walther, who had been taken into his house by Sachs and spent the night there, sings a recital of a dream; and Sachs, struck by its beauty, transcribes it, punctuating it with bits of comments and advice. Beckmesser, entering Sachs's shop when the cobbler-poet is out for a moment, finds the song, concludes that it is Sachs's own composition, and appropriates it.
Sachs has heard the talk between Eva and Walther and determined to ward off disaster in one shape at any rate: he places a light so that they cannot get away without being seen; they are furious, desperate, but that loveliest of melodies flows on until Beckmesser comes in to perform his serenade.
One more illustration: The greater part of the second act of "Die Meistersinger" is taken up with Beckmesser's serenade, comically interrupted by the songs and the hammering of Hans Sachs the cobbler. Toward the end the apprentice David sees Beckmesser, and imagining he is serenading his sweetheart, assaults and beats him most unmercifully.
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?
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.
I am at work on them, as you see; you shall have them to-morrow." "Devil take the shoes!" groans Beckmesser; "What I want here is quiet!" But his words are lost amid Sachs's hammer-blows and unmoderated voice launching forth upon the second verse. "You are to stop at once!" Beckmesser, in mounting anger, orders Sachs, as, hardly pausing to take breath, the shoe-maker is attacking the third verse.
What is he doing so late at night?" "It is Beckmesser!" "What, the Marker? The Marker in my power? There is one whose loafing in the street shall not trouble us long...." Again she catches in terror at his arm, so ready ever to catch at the sword. "For the love of Heaven, listen! Do you wish to waken my father? The man will sing his song and then will go his way.
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."
He has candidly rejoiced that short work was made of that adventurer, Von Stolzing; why should he not be permitted to encounter the same sort of treatment? Why indeed should not his dishonesty be turned to use? "That Master Beckmesser here turned thief," reflects Sachs, "falls in excellently with my plan." Eva appears in the doorway, Eva dazzling in her white wedding-dress.
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