efore 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. These at first
discompose the singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily
what it is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay
no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the interruptions with
his voice. Louder and louder and ever more breathlessly he sings,
a lyric that is more prosy than prose, a piece of common statement
of facts, tortured into verse, which attains metre only by throwing
the accent continually, ludicrously, on the wrong syllables. The
melody, nasal and snuffling, is the very prose, too, of music. A
ridiculous, dead-in-earnest song, relating in three long verses the
circumstances of the song-contest and the singer's tender hopes.

By the end of the second verse, the teasing shoe-maker has tapped
so much that the soles are solid with the vamps. He swings the
finished shoes triumphantly before his customer, announcing that
he has thought of an appropriate verse to write on the soles, and
it is: "A good song must keep time!" But Beckmesser does not stop
for him. Beckmesser disdainfully goes on, as if he and the lady
were alone in the world, and he sang thus loud to overpower some
such thing as the sea-surf. In his engrossment he fails to take
account of various ominous signs. He does not see David appear at
his chamber-window. In spite of Eva's clothes which she is wearing,
the boy recognises Magdalene at the casement across the way. His
jealousy is quick to suppose her cold treatment of himself due to
an inclination toward this new admirer. The neighbours, too, begin
to lean out of their windows and ask the reason of this abominable
caterwauling. A crowd collects in the street, of persons trying
to find out what is the matter. The apprentices come flocking,
mischievous instigators to mischief, and the journeymen, little
better than they. Soon, there is difference and quarreling among
those arriving to inquire the cause of the disturbance. Neighbours
pour into the street, men and women in night-attire; finally, the heavy
burghers arrive, the masters themselves, noisy, almost disorderly, in
their attempts to restore order. Beckmesser, singing at the top of
his lungs, does not wake to consciousness of his surroundings until
a cudgel falls across his back, wielded by David. He flees--but is
at every few steps overtaken ag