The prelude prepares for Sachs’ monologue, a profound thing, and one moreover entirely new—­had Shakespeare been a musician he might have done something like it.  Then David the Irresponsible enters, and we get some more of Wagner’s exquisite fooling; next we have Walther with his “dream,” out of which the Prize-song is made.  This is a long scene—­perhaps a little too long—­for Wagner seems to have been determined that if the audience did not feel the beauty of his melody it should not be for want of hearing it often enough.  As Walther sings Sachs takes it down in tablature, calling out to him what sections are next required.  Sachs then declares that this is indeed a master-song, and will win Walther the prize he so much desires; he and Walther go off to attire themselves for the contest, and Beckmesser limps in.  In dumb show he describes his aches and pains and shows how he is thinking of his thrashing of the night before; and what he does not say the orchestra says very plainly for him.  There is far too much of it—­for English tastes, at any rate—­before he is alarmed by discovering the still wet manuscript in Sachs’ handwriting.  He snatches it up and conceals it; Sachs comes back dressed for the great ceremony, and there is a row—­Beckmesser querulous, bitterly angry and suspicious, on the one hand, Sachs quietly scornful on the other.  Let me point out that this scene is another example of Wagner’s stage craftsmanship at its best.  There is nothing conventional in the way Sachs and Walther are got off to give Beckmesser his chance:  what more natural than that they should go to prepare themselves?  Nor is the finding of the manuscript one of those things that give people who don’t like opera cause to blaspheme:  Sachs simply left it on the table to dry until he returned for it.  Compare this scene with that in Verdi’s Falstaff, where that fat hero, hiding behind a screen, must be supposed not to hear an elaborate ensemble number sung by the other characters—­an instance which one might presume to be intended to make the “aside” so ridiculous that no one would ever dare to use it again.  Wagner, for the time, at any rate, had ceased to make demands on the credulity of his audiences or their meek acceptance of a preposterous convention.  The business is kept up too long, as I have just confessed; and this is perhaps explained by Wagner’s evident desire to make fun of the men who for years had called him a charlatan, a bad musician, and generally done their best to prevent him earning his living.  Still, it is a small blot on a big opera.  The music for such incidents cannot be of the highest beauty; here we have one of the cases of a tour de force.  But even its inferiority is made to serve a purpose; it serves as a foil for that which accompanies the entry of Eva and her conversation with Sachs.  Beckmesser has gone away joyfully with the manuscript, fully believing he has got possession of a song by Sachs—­who has told him he can do what he