A Book of Operas: Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music Part 12

Such is the story of Wagner's "Parsifal." It is the purpose of this book to help the musical layman who loves lyric drama to enjoyment.

Criticism might do this, but a purpose of simple exposition has already been proclaimed, and shall be adhered to lest some reader think that he is being led too far afield. In this case the exposition shall take the form of a marshalling of the elements of the story in two aspects--religious and legendary. Careful readers of English literature will have had no difficulty in recognizing in it a story of the quest of the Holy Grail. Tennyson will have taught them that the hero is that

Sir Percivale Whom Arthur and his knighthood called the Pure;

that the talismanic vessel is

the cup itself from which our Lord Drank at the last sad supper with His own;

that the lance which struck and healed the grievous wound in the side of the king is the spear with which the side of the Christ was pierced on Calvary. It is also obvious that the king, whose name is Amfortas, that is, "the powerless one," is a symbol of humanity suffering from the wounds of slavery to desire; that the heroic act of Parsifal, as Wagner calls him, which brings release to the king and his knights, is renunciation of desire, prompted by pity, compa.s.sion, fellow-suffering; and that this gentle emotion it was that had inspired knowledge simultaneously of a great need and a means of deliverance. The ethical idea of the drama, as I set forth in a book ent.i.tled "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama" many years ago, is that it is the enlightenment which comes through pity which brings salvation. The allusion is to the redemption of mankind by the sufferings and compa.s.sionate death of Christ; and that stupendous tragedy is the prefiguration of the mimic drama which Wagner has constructed. The spectacle to which he invites us, and with which he hoped to impress us and move us to an acceptance of the lesson underlying his play, is the adoration of the Holy Grail, cast in the form of a mimicry of the Last Supper, bedizened with some of the glittering pageantry of mediaeval knighthood and romance.

In the minds of many persons it is a profanation to make a stage spectacle out of religious things; and it has been urged that "Parsifal" is not only religious but specifically Christian; not only Christian but filled with parodies of elements which are partly liturgical, partly Biblical. In narrating the incidents of the play I have purposely avoided all allusions to the things which have been matters of controversy. It is possible to look upon "Parsifal" as a sort of glorified fairy tale, and to this end I purpose to subject its elements to inquiry, and shall therefore go a bit more into detail. Throughout the play Parsifal is referred to as a redeemer, and in the third act scenes in which he plays as the central figure are borrowed from the life of Christ. Kundry, the sorceress, who attempts his destruction at one time and is in the service of the knights of the Grail at another, anoints his feet and dries them with her hair, as the Magdalen did the feet of Christ in the house of Simon the Pharisee. Parsifal baptizes Kundry and admonishes her to believe in the Redeemer:--

Die Taufe nimm Und glaub' an den Erloser!

Kundry weeps. Unto the woman who was a sinner and wept at His feet Christ said: "Thy sins are forgiven. . . . Thy faith hath saved thee. Go in peace." At the elevation of the grail by Parsifal after the healing of Amfortas a dove descends from the dome and hovers over the new king's head. What saith the Scripture? "And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of G.o.d descending like a dove, and lighting upon him." (St. Matthew iii.

16.) It would be idle to argue that these things are not Biblical, though the reported allusions to Parsifal as a redeemer do not of necessity belong in the category. We shall see presently that the drama is permeated with Buddhism, and there were a mult.i.tude of redeemers and saviours in India besides the Buddha.

Let us look at the liturgical elements. The Holy Grail is a chalice.

It is brought into the temple in solemn procession in a veiled shrine and deposited on a table. Thus, also, the chalice, within its pall, is brought in at the sacrament of the ma.s.s and placed on the altar before the celebrant. In the drama boys' voices sing in the invisible heights:--

Nehmet hin mein Blut Um unserer Liebe willen!

Nehmet hin meinem Leib Auf da.s.s ihr mein gedenkt!

Is there a purposed resemblance here to the words of consecration in the ma.s.s? Accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim Corpus meum. Accipite, et bibite ex eo omnes. Hic est enim Calix sanguinis mei! In a moment made wonderfully impressive by Wagner's music, while Amfortas bends over the grail and the knights are on their knees, a ray of light illumines the cup and it glows red. Amfortas lifts it high, gently sways it from side to side, and blesses the bread and wine which youthful servitors have placed beside each knight on the table. In the book of the play, as the hall gradually grows light the cups before the knights appear filled with red wine, and beside each lies a small loaf of bread. Now the celestial choristers sing: "The wine and bread of the Last Supper, once the Lord of the Grail, through pity's love-power, changed into the blood which he shed, into the body which he offered. To-day the Redeemer whom ye laud changes the blood and body of the sacrificial offering into the wine poured out for you, and the bread that you eat!" And the knights respond antiphonally: "Take of the bread; bravely change it anew into strength and power. Faithful unto death, staunch in effort to do the works of the Lord. Take of the blood; change it anew to life's fiery flood. Gladly in communion, faithful as brothers, to fight with blessed courage." Are these words, or are they not, a paraphrase of those which in the canon of the ma.s.s follow the first and second ablutions of the celebrant: Quod ore sumpsimus Domine, etc., and: Corpus tuum, Domine, etc.? He would be but little critical who would deny it.

Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that Wagner wished only to parody the eucharistic rite. He wanted to create a ceremonial which should be beautiful, solemn, and moving; which should be an appropriate accompaniment to the adoration of a mystical relic; which should, in a large sense, be neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Buddhistic; which should symbolize a conception of atonement older than Christianity, older than Buddhism, older than all records of the human imagination. Of this more anon. As was his custom, Wagner drew from whatever source seemed to him good and fruitful; and though he doubtless thought himself at liberty to receive suggestions from the Roman Catholic ritual, as well as the German Lutheran, it is even possible that he had also before his mind scenes from Christian Masonry. This possibility was once suggested by Mr. F. C. Burnand, who took the idea from the last scene of the first act only, and does not seem to have known how many connections the Grail legend had with mediaeval Freemasonry or Templarism. There are more elements a.s.sociated with the old Knights Templars and their rites in Wagner's drama than I am able to discuss. To do so I should have to be an initiate and have more s.p.a.ce at my disposal than I have here. I can only make a few suggestions: In the old Welsh tale of Peredur, which is a tale of the quest of a magical talisman, the subst.i.tute for the grail is a dish containing a b.l.o.o.d.y head. That head in time, as the legend pa.s.sed through the imaginations of poets and romances, became the head of John the Baptist, and there was a belief in the Middle Ages that the Knights Templars wors.h.i.+pped a b.l.o.o.d.y head. The head of John the Baptist enters dimly into Wagner's drama in the conceit that Kundry is a reincarnation of Herodias, who is doomed to make atonement, not for having danced the head off the prophet's shoulders, but for having reviled Christ as he was staggering up Calvary under the load of the cross. But this is pursuing speculations into regions that are shadowy and vague. Let it suffice for this branch of our study that Mr. Burnand has given expression to the theory that the scene of the adoration of the grail and the Love Feast may also have a relations.h.i.+p with the ceremony of installation in the Masonic orders of chivalry, in which a cup of brotherly love is presented to the Grand Commander, who drinks and asks the Sir Knights to pledge him in the cup "in commemoration of the Last Supper of our Grand Heavenly Captain, with his twelve disciples, whom he commanded thus to remember him." Here, says Mr. Burnand, there is no pretence to sacrifice. Partic.i.p.ation in the wine is a symbol of a particular and peculiarly close intercommunion of brotherhood.

To get the least offence from "Parsifal" it ought to be accepted in the spirit of the time in which Christian symbolism was grafted on the old tales of the quest of a talisman which lie at the bottom of it. The time was the last quarter of the twelfth century and the first quarter of the thirteenth. It is the period of the third and fourth crusades. Relic wors.h.i.+p was at its height. Less than a hundred years before (in 1101) the Genoese crusaders had brought back from the Holy Land as a part of the spoils of Caesarea, which they were helpful in capturing under Baldwin, a three-cornered dish, which was said to be the veritable dish used at the Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles. The belief that it was cut out of a solid emerald drew Bonaparte's attention to it, and he carried it away to Paris in 1806 and had it examined. It proved to be nothing but gla.s.s, and he graciously gave it back to Genoa in 1814. There it still reposes in the Church of St. John, but it is no longer an object of wors.h.i.+p, though it might fairly excite a feeling of veneration.

For 372 years Nuremberg possessed what the devout believed to be the lance of Longinus, with which the side of Christ was opened. The relic, like most objects of its kind (the holy coat, for instance), had a rival which, after inspiring victory at the siege of Antioch, found its way to Paris with the most sacred relics, for which Louis IX built the lovely Sainte Chapelle; now it is in the basilica of the Vatican, at Rome. The Nuremberg relic, however, enjoyed the advantage of historical priority. It is doubly interesting, or rather was so, because it was one of Wagner's historical characters who added it to the imperial treasure of the Holy Roman Empire. This was none other than Henry the Fowler, the king who is righteous in judgment and tuneful of speech in the opera "Lohengrin." Henry, so runs the story, wrested the lance from the Burgundian king, Rudolph III, some time about A.D. 929. After many vicissitudes the relic was given for safe keeping to the imperial city of Nuremberg, in 1424, by the Emperor Sigismund. It was placed in a casket, which was fastened with heavy chains to the walls of the Spitalkirche. There it remained until 1796. One may read about the ceremonies attending its annual exposition, along with other relics, in the old history of Nuremberg, by Wagenseil, which was the source of Wagner's knowledge of the mastersingers. The disruption of the Holy Roman Empire caused a scattering of the jewels and relics in the imperial treasury, and the present whereabouts of this sacred lance is unknown. The casket and chains, however, are preserved in the Germanic Museum at Nuremberg to this day, and there have been seen, doubtless, by many who are reading these lines.

There is nothing in "Parsifal," neither personage nor incident nor thing, no principle of conduct, which did not live in legendary tales and philosophical systems long before Christianity existed as a universal religion. The hero in his first estate was born, bred, went out in search of adventure, rescued the suffering, and righted wrong, just as Krishna, Perseus, Theseus, OEdipus, Romulus, Remus, Siegfried, and Wolf-Dietrich did before him. He is an Aryan legendary and mythical hero-type that has existed for ages. The talismanic cup and spear are equally ancient; they have figured in legend from time immemorial. The incidents of their quest, the agonies wrought by their sight, their mission as inviters of sympathetic interest, and the failure of a hero to achieve a work of succor because of failure to show pity, are all elements in Keltic Quester and Quest stories, which antedate Christianity. Kundry, the loathly damsel and siren, has her prototypes in cla.s.sic fable and romantic tale. Read the old English ballad of "The Marriage of Sir Gawain." So has the magic castle of Klingsor, surrounded by its beautiful garden. It is all the things which I enumerated in the chapter devoted to "Tannhauser." It is also the Underworld, where prevails the law of taboo--"Thou must," or "Thou shalt not;" whither Psyche went on her errand for Venus and came back scot-free; where Peritheus and Theseus remained grown to a rocky seat till Hercules came to release them with mighty wrench and a loss of their bodily integrity. The sacred lance which s.h.i.+nes red with blood after it has by its touch healed the wound of Amfortas is the bleeding spear which was a symbol of righteous vengeance unperformed in the old Bardic day of Britain; it became the lance of Longinus which pierced the side of Christ when Christian symbolism was applied to the ancient Arthurian legends; and you may read in Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" how a dolorous stroke dealt with it by Balin opened a wound in the side of King Pellam from which he suffered many years, till Galahad healed him in the quest of the Sangreal by touching the wound with the blood which flowed from the spear.

These are the folklore elements in Wagner's "Parsifal." It is plain that they might have been wrought into a drama substantially like that which was the poet-composer's last gift to art without loss of either dignity or beauty. Then his drama would have been like a glorified fairy play, imposing and of gracious loveliness, and there would have been nothing to quarrel about. But Wagner was a philosopher of a sort, and a sincere believer in the idea that the theatre might be made to occupy the same place in the modern world that it did in the cla.s.sic. It was to replace the Church and teach by direct preachments as well as allegory the philosophical notions which he thought essential to the salvation of humanity. For the chief of these he went to that system of philosophy which rests on the idea that the world is to be redeemed by negation of the will to live, the conquering of all desire--that the highest happiness is the achievement of nirvana, nothingness. This conception finds its highest expression in the quietism and indifferentism of the old Brahmanic religion (if such it can be called), in which holiness was to be obtained by speculative contemplation, which seems to me the quintessence of selfishness. In the reformed Brahmanism called Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure a compa.s.sionate sympathy for others. Asceticism was not put aside, but regulated and ordered, wrought into a communal system. It was purged of some of its selfishness by appreciation of the loveliness of compa.s.sionate love as exemplified in the life of cakya-Muni and those labors which made him one of the many redeemers and saviours of which Hindu literature is full. Something of this was evidently in the mind of Wagner as long ago as 1857, when, working on "Tristan und Isolde," he for a while harbored the idea of bringing Parzival (as he would have called him then) into the presence of the dying Tristan to comfort him with a sermon on the happiness of renunciation. Long before Wagner had sketched a tragedy ent.i.tled "Jesus of Nazareth," the hero of which was to be a human philosopher who preached the saving grace of love and sought to redeem his time and people from the domination of conventional law, the offspring of selfishness. His philosophy was socialism imbued by love. Before Wagner finished "Tristan und Isolde" he had outlined a Hindu play in which hero and heroine were to accept the doctrines of the Buddha, take the vow of chast.i.ty, renounce the union toward which love impelled them, and enter into the holy community. Blending these two schemes, Wagner created "Parsifal." For this drama he could draw the principle of compa.s.sionate pity and fellow-suffering from the stories of both cakya-Muni and Jesus of Nazareth. But for the sake of a spectacle, I think, he accepted the Christian doctrine of the Atonement with all its mystical elements; for they alone put the necessary symbolical significance into the princ.i.p.al apparatus of the play--the Holy Grail and the Sacred Lance. {1}

Footnotes:

{1} "Parsifal" was performed for the first time at the Wagner Festival Theatre in Bayreuth on July 28, 1882. The prescription that it should belong exclusively to Bayreuth was respected till December 24, 1903, when Heinrich Conried, taking advantage of the circ.u.mstance that there was no copyright on the stage representation of the work in America, brought it out with sensational success at the Metropolitan Opera-house in New York. The princ.i.p.al artists concerned in this and subsequent performances were Milka Ternina (Kundry), Alois Burgstaller (Paraifal), Anton Van Rooy (Amfortas), Robert Bla.s.s (Gurnemanz), Otto Gorlitz (Klingsor) and Louise Homer (a voice).

CHAPTER XV

"DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NuRNBERG"

The best definition of the true purpose of comedy which I know is that it is to "chastise manners with a smile" (Ridendo castigat mores); and it has no better exemplification in the literature of opera than Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg." Wagner's mind dwelt much on Greek things, and as he followed a cla.s.sical principle in choosing mythological and legendary subjects for his tragedies, so also he followed cla.s.sical precedent in drawing the line between tragedy and comedy. "Tannhauser," "Tristan und Isolde,"

"Der Ring des Nibelungen," "Parsifal," and, in a lesser degree, "Lohengrin," are examples of the old tragedy type. To them the restrictions of time and s.p.a.ce do not apply. They deal with large pa.s.sions, and their heroes are G.o.ds or G.o.dlike men who are shattered against the rock of immutable law--the "Fate" of the ancient tragedians. His only significant essay in the field of comedy was made in "Die Meistersinger," and this is as faithful to the old conception of comedy as the dramas mentioned are to that of tragedy.

It deals with the manners, vices, and follies of the common people; and, therefore, it has local environment and ill.u.s.trates a period in history. It was conceived as a satyr-play following a tragedy ("Tannhauser"), and though there can be no doubt that it was designed to teach a lesson in art, it nevertheless aims primarily to amuse, and only secondarily to instruct and correct. Moreover, even the most cutting of its satirical lashes are administered with a smile.

As a picture of the social life of a quaint German city three and a half centuries ago, its vividness and truthfulness are beyond all praise; it is worthy to stand beside the best dramas of the world, and has no equal in operatic literature. The food for its satire, too, is most admirably chosen, for no feature of the social life of that place and period is more amiably absurd than the efforts of the handicraftsmen and tradespeople, with their prosaic surroundings, to keep alive by dint of pedantic formularies the spirit of minstrelsy, which had a natural stimulus in the chivalric life of the troubadours and minnesingers of whom the mastersingers thought themselves the direct and legitimate successors. In its delineation of the pompous doings of the mastersingers, Wagner is true to the letter. He has vitalized the dry record to be found in old Wagenseil's book on Nuremberg, {1} and intensified the vivid description of a mastersingers' meeting which the curious may read in August Hagen's novel "Norica." His studies have been marvellously exact and careful, and he has put Wagenseil's book under literal and liberal contribution, as will appear after a while. Now it seems best to tell the story of the comedy before discussing it further.

Veit Pogner, a rich silversmith, desiring to honor the craft of the mastersingers, to whose guild he belongs, offers his daughter Eva in marriage to the successful compet.i.tor at the annual meeting of the mastersingers on the feast of St. John. Eva is in love (she declares it in the impetuous manner peculiar to Wagner's heroines) with Walther von Stolzing, a young Franconian knight; and the knight with her. After a flirtation in church during divine service, Walther meets her before she leaves the building, and asks if she be betrothed. She answers in the affirmative, but it is to the unknown victor at the contest of singing on the morrow. He resolves to enter the guild so as to be qualified for the compet.i.tion. A trial of candidates takes place in the church of St. Catherine in the afternoon, and Walther, knowing nothing of the rules of the mastersingers, some of which have hurriedly been outlined to him by David, a youngster who is an apprentice at shoemaking and also songmaking, fails, though Hans Sachs, a master in both crafts, recognizes evidences of genius in the knight's song, and espouses his cause as against Beckmesser, the town clerk, who aims at acquiring Pogner's fortune by winning his daughter. The young people, in despair at Walther's failure, are about to elope when they are prevented by the arrival on the scene of Beckmesser. It is night, and he wishes to serenade Eva; Sachs sits cobbling at his bench, while Eva's nurse, Magdalena, disguised, sits at a window to hear the serenade in her mistress's stead. Sachs interrupts the serenader, who is an ill-natured clown, by l.u.s.tily shouting a song in which he seeks also to give warning of knowledge of her intentions to Eva, whose departure with the knight had been interrupted by the cobbler when he came out of his shop to work in the cool of the evening; but he finally agrees to listen to Beckmesser on condition that he be permitted to mark each error in the composition by striking his lap-stone. The humorous consequences can be imagined. Beckmesser becomes enraged at Sachs, sings more and more falsely, until Sachs is occupied in beating a veritable tattoo on his lap-stone. To add to Beckmesser's discomfiture, David, Sachs's apprentice and Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking the serenade intended for his love, begins to belabor the singer with a chub; neighbors join in the brawl, which proceeds right merrily until interrupted by the horn of a night watchman. The dignity and vigor of Wagner's poetical fancy are attested by the marvellous chose of the act. The tremendous hubbub of the street brawl is at its height and the business of the act is at an end.

The coming of the Watchman, who has evidently been aroused by the noise, is foretold by his horn. The crowd is seized with a panic.

All the brawlers disappear behind doors. The sleepy Watchman stares about him in amazement, rubs his eyes, sings the monotonous chant which publishes the hour of the night, continues on his round, and the moon s.h.i.+nes on a quiet street in Nuremberg as the curtain falls.

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, discovering the theft, gives the song to Beckmesser, who secures a promise from Sachs not to betray him, and resolves to sing it at the compet.i.tion.

The festival is celebrated in a meadow on the banks of the Pegnitz River, between Furth and Nuremberg. It begins with a gathering of all the guilds of Nuremberg, each division in the procession entering to characteristic music--a real masterpiece, whether viewed as spectacle, poetry, or music. The compet.i.tion begins, and Beckmesser makes a monstrously stupid parody of Walther's song.

He is hooted at and ridiculed, and, becoming enraged, charges the authors.h.i.+p of the song on Sachs, who coolly retorts that it is a good song when correctly sung. To prove his words he calls on Walther to sing it. The knight complies, the mastersingers are delighted, and Pogner rewards the singer with Eva's hand. Sachs, at the request of the presiding officer of the guild, also offers him the medal as the insignia of members.h.i.+p in the guild of mastersingers. Walther's experience with the pedantry which had condemned him the day before, when he had sung as impulse, love, and youthful ardor had prompted, leads him to decline the distinction; but the old poet discourses on the respect due to the masters and their, work as the guaranty of the permanence of German art, and persuades him to enter the guild of mastersingers.

"Die Meistersinger" is photographic in many of its scenes, personages, and incidents; but so far as the stage pictures which we are accustomed to see in the opera-houses of New York and the European capitals are concerned, this statement must be taken with a great deal of allowance, owing to the fact that opera directors, stage managers, scene painters, and costumers are blithely indifferent to the verities of history. I have never seen a mimic reproduction of the church of St. Catherine on any stage; yet the church stands to-day with its walls intact as they were at the time in which the comedy is supposed to play. This time is fixed by the fact that its princ.i.p.al character, Hans Sachs, is represented as a widower who might himself be a suitor for Eva's hand. Now the veritable Sachs was a widower in the summer of the year 1560. I visited Nuremberg in 1886 in search of relics of the mastersingers and had no little difficulty in finding the church. It had not been put to its original purposes for more than a hundred years, and there seemed to be but few people in Nuremberg who knew of its existence. It has been many things since it became secularized: a painter's academy, drawing-school, military hospital, warehouse, concert-hall, and, no doubt, a score of other things. When I found it with the aid of the police it was the paint-shop and scenic storeroom of the munic.i.p.al theatre. It is a small building, utterly unpretentious of exterior and interior, innocent of architectural beauty, hidden away in the middle of a block of lowly buildings used as dwellings, carpenter shops, and the like. That Wagner never visited it is plain from the fact that though he makes it the scene of one act of his comedy (as he had to do to be historically accurate), his stage directions could not possibly be accommodated to its architecture. In 1891 Mr. Louis Loeb, the American artist, whose early death in the summer of 1909 is widely mourned, visited the spot and made drawings for me of the exterior and interior of the church as it looked then. The church was built in the last half decade of the thirteenth century, and on its water-stained walls, when I visited it, there were still to be seen faint traces of the frescoes which once adorned it and were painted in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries; but they were ruined beyond hope of restoration. In the Germanic Museum I found a wooden tablet dating back to 1581, painted by one Franz Hein. It preserves portraits of four distinguished members of the mastersingers' guild.

There is a middle panel occupied by two pictures, the upper showing King David, the patron saint of the guild, so forgetful of chronology as to be praying before a crucifix, the lower a meeting of the mastersingers. Over the heads of the a.s.semblage is a representative of the medallion with which the victor in a contest used to be decorated, as we see in the last scene of Wagner's comedy. One of these decorations was given to the guild by Sachs and was in use for a whole century. At the end of that time it had become so worn that Wagenseil replaced it with another.

Church and tablet are the only relics of the mastersingers left in Nuremberg which may be called personal. I had expected to find autobiographic ma.n.u.scripts of Sachs, but in this was disappointed.

There is a volume of mastersongs in the poet-cobbler's handwriting in the Royal Library of Berlin, and one of these is the composition of the veritable Sixtus Beckmesser; but most of the Sachs ma.n.u.scripts are in Zwickau. In the Bibliotheca Norica Williana, incorporated with the Munic.i.p.al Library of Nuremberg, there are several volumes of mastersingers' songs purchased from an old mastersinger some 135 years ago, and from these the students may learn the structure and spirit of the mastersongs of the period of the opera as well as earlier and later periods, though he will find all the instruction he needs in any dozen or twenty of the 4275 mastersongs written by Hans Sachs. The ma.n.u.script books known serve to prove one thing which needed not to have called up a doubt. In them are poems from all of the mastersingers who make up the meeting which condemns Walther in St. Catherine's church. Wagner has adhered to the record. {2} The most interesting of Sixtus Beckmesser's compositions is "A New Year's Song," preserved in the handwriting of Sachs in the Royal Library at Berlin. This I have translated in order to show the form of the old mastersongs as described by the apprentice, David, in Wagner's comedy, and also to prove (so far as a somewhat free translation can) that the veritable Beckmesser was not the stupid dunce that Wagner, for purposes of his own, and tempted, doubtless, by the humor which he found in the name, represented him to be. In fact, I am strongly tempted to believe that with the exception of Sachs himself, Beckmesser was the best of the mastersingers of the Nuremberg school:--

A NEW YEAR'S SONG By Sixtus Beckmesser

(First "Stoll") Joy Christian thoughts employ This day Doth say The Book of old That we should hold The faith foretold; For naught doth doubt afford.

The patriarchs with one accord Lived hoping that the Lord Would rout the wicked horde.

Thus saith the word To all believers given.

(Second "Stoll") G.o.d Council held, triune, When soon The boon The son foresaw: Fulfilled the law That we might draw Salvation's prize. G.o.d then An angel sent cross moor and fen, ('Twas Gabriel, heaven's denizen,) To Mary, purest maid 'mongst men.

He greeted her With blessings sent from heaven.

(The "Abgesang") Thus spake the angel graciously: "The Lord with thee, Thou blessed she; The Lord's voice saith, Which breathes thy breath, That men have earned eternal death.

Faith Saves alone from sin's subjection; For while weak Eve G.o.d's anger waked, 'Twas, Ave, thine the blest election To give the world peace and protection, Most blessed gift To mortals ever given!"

In Nuremberg the veritable Hans Sachs wrote plays on Tannhauser, Tristan, and Siegfried between three and four hundred years before the poet-composer who put the old cobbler-poet into his comedy. Very nave and very archaic indeed are Hans Sachs's dramas compared with Wagner's; but it is, perhaps, not an exaggeration to say that Sachs was as influential a factor in the dramatic life of his time as Wagner in ours. He was among the earliest of the German poets who took up the miracle plays and mysteries after they had been abandoned by the church and developed them on the lines which ran out into the cla.s.sic German drama. His immediate predecessors were the writers of the so-called "Fastnacht" (Mardi-gras) plays, who flourished in Nuremberg in the fifteenth century. Out of these plays German comedy arose, and among those who rocked its cradle was another of the mastersingers who plays a part in Wagner's opera,--Hans Folz. It was doubtless largely due to the influence of Hans Sachs that the guild of mastersingers built the first German theatre in Nuremberg in 1550. Before then plays with religious subjects were performed in St. Catherine's church, as we have seen, the meeting place of the guild. Secular plays were represented in private houses.

Hans Sachs wrote no less than 208 dramas, which he divided into "Carnival Plays," "Plays," "Comedies," and "Tragedies." He dropped the first designation in his later years, but his first dramatic effort was a Fastnachtspiel, and treated the subject of Tannhauser and Venus. It bears the date February 21, 1517, and was therefore written 296 years before Wagner was born. Of what is now dramatic form and structure, there is not a sign in this play. It is merely a dialogue between Venus and various persons who stand for as many cla.s.ses of society. The t.i.tle is: "Das Hoffgesindt Veneris," or, as it might be rendered in English, "The Court of Venus." The characters are a Herald, Faithful Eckhardt, Danheuser (sic), Dame Venus, a Knight, Physician, Citizen, Peasant, Soldier, Gambler, Drunkard, Maid, and Wife. The Knight, Citizen, and the others appear in turn before Venus and express contempt for her powers,--the Knight because of his bravery, the Physician because of his learning, the Maid because of her virtue, the Wife because of her honor.

Faithful Eckhardt, a character that figures in many Thuringian legends, especially in tales of the Wild Hunt, warns each person in turn to beware of Venus. The latter listens to each boast and lets loose an arrow. Each boaster succ.u.mbs with a short lamentation. When the play opens, Danheuser is already a prisoner of the G.o.ddess.

After all the rest have fallen victims, he begs for his release, and they join in his pet.i.tion. Venus rejects the prayer, speaks in praise of her powers, and calls on a piper for music. A general dance follows, whereupon the company go with the enchantress into the Venusberg. The last speech of Venus ends with the line:--

So says Hans Sachs of Nuremberg.

There is but a single scene in "The Court of Venus." In other plays written in after years, no matter how often the action demanded it, there is neither change of scenes nor division into acts; and the personages, whether Biblical or cla.s.sical, talk in the manner of the simple folk of the sixteenth century. Sachs's tragedy, "Von der strengen Lieb' Herrn Tristrant mit der schonen Konigin Isalden" ("Of the strong love of Lord Tristram and the beautiful Queen Iseult"), contains seven acts, as is specified in the continuation of the t.i.tle "und hat sieben Akte." It was written thirty-six years later than the carnival play and three years after the establishment of a theatre in Nuremberg by the mastersingers. Each act ends with a triple rhyme. Though Sachs uses stage directions somewhat freely compared with the other dramatists of the period, the personages all speak in the same manner, and time and s.p.a.ce are annihilated in the action most bewilderingly. Thus, no sooner does Herr Tristrant volunteer to meet Morhold der Held to settle the question of "Curnewelshland's" tribute to "Irland" than the two are at it hammer and tongs on an island in the ocean. All the other incidents of the old legends follow as fast as they are mentioned. Tristrant saves his head in Ireland when discovered as the slayer of Morhold by ridding the country of a dragon, and is repeatedly convicted of treachery and taken back into confidence by Konig Marx, as one may read in Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." Sachs follows an old conclusion of the story and gives Tristrant a second Iseult to wife, and she tells the lie about the sails. The first Iseult dies of a broken heart at the sight of her lover's bier, and the Herald in a speech draws the moral of the tale:--

Aus dem so la.s.s dich treulich warnen, O Mensch, vor solcher Liebe Garnen, Und spar dein Lieb' bis in die Eh', Dann hab' Ein lieb' und keine meh.

Diesselb' Lieb' ist mit Gott und Ehren, Die Welt damit fruchtbar zu mehren.

Dazu giebt Gott selbst allewegen Sein' Gnad' Gedeihen und milden Segen.

Da.s.s stete Lieb' und Treu' aufwachs'

Im ehlich'n Stand', das wunscht Hans Sachs.

One of the most thrilling scenes in "Die Meistersinger" is the greeting of Hans Sachs by the populace when the hero enters with the mastersingers' guild at the festival of St. John (the chorus, "Wach'

auf! es nahet gen den Tag"). Here there is another ill.u.s.tration of Wagner's adherence to the verities of history, or rather, of his employment of them. The words of the uplifting choral song are not Wagner's, but were written by the old cobbler-poet himself. Wagner's stage people apply them to their idol, but Sachs uttered them in praise of Martin Luther; they form the beginning of his poem ent.i.tled "The Wittenberg Nightingale," which was printed in 1523.