an enthusiastic song in praise of women, which, however, provokes such incessant disapprobation on the part of the marker that ere his song is half-sung he has 'failed in his singing.' Sachs, who is pleased with the youth and wishes him well, baffles a desperate attempt to carry off the maiden, and thereby finds an opportunity of deeply annoying the marker. The latter, who, with a view to humbling him, has already been turning rudely on Sachs about a pair of shoes not yet finished, plants himself at night before the maiden's window, in order to make trial of the song with which he hopes to win her by singing it as a serenade. By so doing he hopes to secure her voice in his favour at the adjudication of the prize. Sachs, whose cobbler's shop is opposite the house thus serenaded, begins singing loudly as soon as the marker strikes up, because, as he informs the infuriated lover, this is necessary if he must keep awake to work so late: that the work is pressing nobody knows better than the marker himself, who has dunned him so mercilessly for the shoes! At last he promises the poor wretch to stop singing on condition that whatever faults he may find, in his judgment, in the marker's song, he may be allowed to mark according to his shoemaker's art--namely, with a blow of the hammer upon the shoe stretched on the last. Then the marker sings: Sachs strikes on the last again and again. The marker jumps up indignantly. Sachs asks him nonchalantly whether his song is finished. 'Not nearly,' he cries. Then Sachs laughingly holds up the shoes outside his shop, and declares that they are now quite finished, thanks to the 'marker's strokes.' With the rest of his song, which in desperation he screams out without a pause, the marker fails lamentably before the lady, who appears at the window violently shaking her head. Disconsolate, he asks Sachs next day for a new song for his wooing. Sachs gives him a poem by the young knight, pretending not to know its source: only he warns him to secure an appropriate tune to which it may be sung. The conceited marker thinks he has nothing to fear in that respect, and sings the song before the public assembly of masters and people to a quite inappropriate tune, which so disfigures it that he once more and this time decisively fails altogether. In his mortification he accuses Sachs of having cheated him by providing so base a song. But Sachs declares the song is a very good one, only it must be sung to a suitable tune. It is then agreed that whoever knows the right tune shall be the victor. The young knight does this and wins the bride: but rejects with disdain the admission to the Guild now offered to him. Sachs humorously defends the Master-Singers' Guild, and closes with the rhyme--