"Though should depart The pride of Holy Rome, Still thrives at home Our sacred German art." The "Marker," thus pourtrayed in The Meistersingers, is Sigs Beckmesser, who is one of those whom Hans Sachs mentions as having taught him. There is nothing remarkable in Hans Sachs being a shoemaker as well as a Meistersinger, for the Guild was chiefly composed of weavers and shoemakers. What is remarkable is that he was something of a poet as well as a Meistersinger. The Guild had to get special leave from the Council each year to maintain their singing schools. This leave was sometimes refused, on the ground that the Masters sang lascivious songs, and bawled them rather than sang. Their meetings occurred principally in the Church of St. Catherine, after afternoon service on Sundays--usually once a month. Public performances took place thrice a year, at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. The public were invited to these great assemblies by placards representing a rose-garden and David playing the harp before our Lord on the Cross. This placard also announced the subjects chosen and the forms of songs allowed on the occasion. As an author, Hans Sachs was astonishingly prolific. Besides his songs, he wrote fables, eighteen books of proverbs, comedies, tragedies and farces (in which he himself acted). Altogether, the number of his works reached the huge total of 6205. Some of his plays--and some were in seven acts--were acted in the Marthakirche and some in the Rathaus. From Sachs' time the drama began to make headway in Germany; but it was not till after his death that it received its first great stimulus, when the English strolling players began to come through Germany, acting Shakespeare's plays among others no doubt, and the more blood-curdling scenes from Ford and Webster. In 1628 the Council provided for such performances by building the Fencing School, "for fencing and comedies" on the Schütt, next to the Wildbad. [Illustration: Nürnberger Spruchsprecher] Sachs was above all things a popular poet. He reflects both the good and the bad side of the people he represents. At his best we find in him that mixture of religious gravity with fresh and pungent humour which is so characteristic of the German spirit of those days. The narrative poem "Der Schneider mit dem Panier" is a good example of this, and is free from that coarseness which too often disfigures his writings. Nor must we forget to mention the long poem, "Ein Lobspruch der Stadt Nürnberg," a descriptive eulogy of his native town. His narrative style is plain and straightforward, his manner pleasingly naive, though often both prolix and prosaic, his humour original and unaffected, if too frequently rough and Rabelaisian. But we can forgive him much for his robust good sense and shrewd irony. The first line of one of his poems-- "In dem Zwanzigsten Kapitel" (of the Bible) will show how prosaic he can be: his well-known couplet on himself--