the scheme by opening his window and throwing a strong light upon the street by which they would have to pass.  Beckmesser, lute in hand, now comes down the street and begins a serenade under Eva’s window.  Sachs drowns his feeble piping with a lusty carol, hammering away meanwhile at a pair of shoes which he must finish that night for Beckmesser to wear on the morrow.  Beckmesser is in despair.  Finally they come to an arrangement.  Beckmesser shall sing his song, and Sachs shall act as ‘marker,’ noting every technical blunder in the words and tune with a stroke of his hammer.  The result is such a din as disturbs the slumbers of the neighbours.  David, the apprentice, comes out and recognises his sweetheart Magdalena at Eva’s window.  He scents a rival in Beckmesser, and begins lustily to cudgel the unfortunate musician.  Soon the street fills with townsfolk and apprentices, all crying and shouting together.  Eva and Walther, under cover of the uproar, are making their escape, when Sachs, who has been on the watch, steps out and stops them.  He bids Eva go home, and takes Walther with him into the house.  Suddenly the watchman’s horn is heard in the distance.  Every one rushes off, and the street is left to the quiet moonlight and the quaint old watchman, who paces up the street solemnly proclaiming the eleventh hour.

In the third act we find Sachs alone in his room, reading an ancient tome, and brooding over the follies of mankind.  David interrupts him with congratulations on his birthday, and sings a choral in his honour.  Walther now appears, full of a wonderful dream he has had.  Sachs makes him sing it, and writes down the words on a piece of paper.  After they have gone out, Beckmesser creeps in, very lame and sore after his cudgelling.  He finds the paper and appropriates it.  Sachs comes in and discovers the theft, but tells Beckmesser he may keep the poem.  The latter is overjoyed at getting hold of a new song, as he supposes, by Sachs, and hurries off to learn it in time for the contest.  Eva now comes in under the pretence of something being amiss with one of her shoes, and, while Sachs is setting it right, Walther sings her the last verse of his dream-song.  The scene culminates in an exquisite quintet in which David and Magdalena join, after which they all go off to the festivities in a meadow outside the town.  There, after much dancing and merry-making, the singing contest comes off.  Beckmesser tries to sing Walther’s words to the melody of his own serenade, the result being such indescribable balderdash that the assembled populace hoots him down, and he rushes off in confusion, Walther’s turn then comes, and he sings his song with such success that the prize is awarded to him with acclamation.  He wins his bride, but he will have nothing to say to the Mastersingers and their pedantry, until Hans Sachs has shown him that in them lies the future of German art.